Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from September 18, 1987

Needed: Christian outrage

Holocausts do not begin with the canards of a solitary lunatic. They begin with the cheering throngs, and they begin with the “honorable” people who cluck their tongues, say “Isn’t that just terrible?” and then go back to watching Donna Rice.

—Rabbi Mark Wilson in

the Charlotte Observer

(June 23, 1987)

Worth fighting for?

The Bishop of Assisi once said to St. Francis, “I think your life is too hard, too rough. You don’t possess anything in this world.”

And Francis replied: “My Lord, if we had possessions, we would need weapons to defend them.”

—quoted in Through the Year with Francis of Assisi

To live in God’s presence

The most holy practice, the nearest to daily life, and the most essential for the spiritual life, is the practice of the presence of God, that is to find joy in his divine company and to make it a habit of life, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times, every moment, without rule or restriction, above all at times of temptation, distress, dryness, and revulsion, and even of faithlessness and sin.

—Brother Lawrence in

The Practice of the Presence of God

Deadlock

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

—George MacDonald, from

George MacDonald, an anthology edited by C. S. Lewis

Divine partnership

Arthur Gossip, a hard-bitten pastor in a slum church in Glasgow, tells of how, at the end of a long day of visiting his parishioners, he arrived late in the afternoon at a five-story tenement where the last family on his list for that day lived at the very top. He was done in and said to himself, “It’s too far up. I’ll come tomorrow.” He was about to turn away when a pair of stooped shoulders seemed to brush past him and start up the stairs with the word, “Then I’ll have to go alone.” Arthur Gossip added, “We went together.”

—Douglas V. Steere

in Gleanings

What, me worry?

Somebody said to me, “When I worry I go to the mirror and say to myself, ‘This tremendous thing which is worrying me is beyond a solution. It is especially too hard for Jesus Christ to handle.’ After I have said that, I smile and I am ashamed.”

—Corrie Ten Boom in

Each New Day

The wrong blessing?

Tell me if you think [this] a vain subtlety. I am beginning to feel that we need a preliminary act of submission not only towards possible future afflictions but also towards possible future blessings. I know it sounds fantastic; but think it over. It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at the moment, we expected some other good.

—C. S. Lewis in

Letters to Malcolm

Thinking the unthinkable

It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything.

—G. K. Chesterton in

The Quotable Chesterton

God’s hide-and-seek

Rabbi Baruck’s grandson Jechiel was playing hide-and-seek with another child. Jechiel hid and waited for his friend to search for him. He waited a long time, and finally left his hiding place. His playmate was nowhere to be found. Now Jechiel realized that his friend had not even bothered to look for him. With tears in his eyes he came running to his grandfather. Then Rabbi Baruck also began to weep and said, “That is the way God acts: I hide, but nobody wants to look for me.”

—Gebhard Maria Behler,

“What Is God’s Game?” in

A Treasury of Catholic Digest

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