Arise (some older mss still read 'Swarm'), O Calvinists, and plead your cause. The doctrines of grace are mightily assailed by those who would proclaim with their father, “I will be like the Most High.” Set forth the biblical case for a sovereign God who is jealous for His glory. Disallow through disputation (and lampooning when needed) the damnable errors of those who have refashioned the great sola doctrines into a salvation-helper gospel that exalts the fallen will of man. From every corner, in every thread exalt the right of God to do whatsoever He pleaseth. Be not dismayed by persistent anthropocentric rantings. Blessed are you when they revile you for the sake of the truth. Happy are ye when the Servetus card is played and the strawmen are paraded before you for He who is enthroned in heaven reigns.
Feminist theologian Mary Daly died Jan. 3. She was a radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian who taught at Boston College for 33 years. Daly consented to retire from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her Women's Studies classroom.May the good Lord have mercy on her soul. Let's all remember her in our prayers. Many of you know about her and her legacy. For those who do not, you can read more about her here and here.
"The lesson of history is that in the tumultuous adjustment that surely lies ahead, those societies that find the most innovative responses to the crisis are most likely to come out as winners, while the others will fall behind. Civilization will be shaped as well by water’s inextricable, deep interdependencies with energy, food, and climate change. More broadly, the freshwater crisis is an early proxy of the twenty-first century’s ultimate challenge of learning how to manage our crowded planet’s resources in both an economically viable and an environmentally sustainable manner. By grasping the lessons of water’s pivotal role on our destiny, we will be better prepared to cope with the crisis about to engulf us all. . . . (continue reading)Related: "Three Reasons That Violence Could Erupt" over water.
1. WELL! when shall we have a mind to begin to do good?
2. Nulla dies sine linea: Do not let a day pass without doing some good during it.
3. We must not be behind time in doing good; for death will not be behind his time.
4. Happy is the youth, because he has time before him to do good.
5. It is well to choose some one good devotion, and to stick to it, and never to abandon it.
6. He who wishes for anything but Christ, does not know what he wishes; he who asks for anything but Christ, does not know what he is asking; he who works, and not for Christ, does not know what he is doing.
7. Let no one wear a mask, otherwise he will do ill; and if he has one, let him burn it.
8. Spiritual persons ought to be equally ready to experience sweetness and consolation in the things of God, or to suffer and keep their ground in drynesses of spirit and devotion, and for as long as God pleases, without their making any complaint about it.
9. God has no need of men.
10. If God be with us, there is no one else left to fear.
11. He who wishes to be perfectly obeyed, should give but few orders.
12. A man should keep himself down, and not busy himself in mirabilibus super se.
13. Men should often renew their good resolutions, and not lose heart because they are tempted against them.
14. The name of Jesus, pronounced with reverence and affection, has a kind of power to soften the heart.
15. Obedience is a short cut to perfection.
16. They who really wish to advance in the ways of God, must give themselves up into the hands of their superiors always and in everything; and they who are not living under obedience must subject themselves of their own accord to a learned and discreet confessor, whom they must obey in the place of God, disclosing to him with perfect freedom and simplicity the affairs of their soul, and they should never come to any resolution without his advice.
17. There is nothing which gives greater security to our actions, or more effectually cuts the snares the devil lays for us, than to follow another person’s will, rather than our own, in doing good.
18. Before a man chooses his confessor, he ought to think well about it, and pray about it also; but when he has once chosen, he ought not to change, except for most urgent reasons, but put the utmost confidence in his director.
19. When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last.
20. Let persons in the world sanctify themselves in their own houses, for neither the court, professions, or labour, are any hindrance to the service of God.
21. Obedience is the true holocaust which we sacrifice to God on the altar of our hearts.
22. In order to be really obedient, it is not enough to do what obedience commands, we must do it without reasoning upon it.
23. Our Blessed Lady ought to be our love and our consolation.
24. The good works which we do of our own will, are not so meritorious as those that are done under obedience.
25. The most beautiful prayer we can make, is to say to God, “As Thou knowest and willest, O Lord, so do with me.”
26. When tribulations, infirmities, and contradictions come, we must not run away in a fright, but vanquish them like men.
27. It is not enough to see that God wishes the good we aim at, but that He wishes it through our instrumentality, in our manner and in our time; and we come to discern all this by true obedience.
28. In order to be perfect, we must not only obey and honour our superiors; we must honour our equals and inferiors also.
29. In dealing with our neighbour, we must assume as much pleasantness of manner as we can, and by this affability win him to the way of virtue.
30. A man who leads a common life under obedience, is more to be esteemed than one who does great penance after his own will.
31. To mortify one passion, no matter how small, is a greater help in the spiritual life than many abstinences, fasts, and disciplines.
Go here for St. Philip Neri's advice for the rest of the year . . .
"As soon as worldly people see that you wish to follow a devout life they aim a thousand darts of mockery and even detraction at you. The most malicious of them will slander your conversion as hypocrisy, bigotry, and trickery. . . .
"Philothea, all this is mere foolish, empty babbling. These people aren't interested in your health or welfare. 'If you were of the world, the world would love what is its own but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hates you,; says the Savior. We have seen gentlemen and ladies spend the whole night, even many nights one after another, playing chess or cards. Is there any concentration more absurd, gloomy, or depressing than this last? Yet worldly people don't say a word and the players' friends don't bother their heads about it.
"If we spend an hour in meditation or get up a little earlier than usual in the morning to prepare for Holy Communion, everyone runs for a doctor to cure us of hypochondria and jaundice. People can pass thirty nights in dancing and no one complains about it, but if they watch through a single Christmas night they cough and claim their stomach is upset the next morning. Does anyone fail to see that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and well disposed to its own children but harsh and rigorous towards the children of God?
"We can never please the world unless we lose ourselves together with it. It is so demanding that it can't be satisfied. "John came neither eating nor drinking," says the Savior, and you say, "He has a devil." "The Son of man came eating and drinking" and you say that he is "a Samaritan."
"It is true, Philothea, that if we are ready to laugh, play cards, or dance with the world in order to please it, it will be scandalized at us, and if we don't, it will accuse us of hypocrisy or melancholy. If we dress well, it will attribute it to some plan we have, and if we neglect our dress, it will accuse of us of being cheap and stingy. Good humor will be called frivolity and mortification sullenness. Thus the world looks at us with an evil eye and we can never please it. It exaggerates our imperfections and claims they are sins, turns our venial sins into mortal sins and changes our sins of weakness into sins of malice.
"'Charity is kind,' says Saint Paul, but the world on the contrary is evil. "Charity thinks no evil," but the world always thinks evil and when it can't condemn our acts it will condemn our intentions. Whether the sheep have horns or not and whether they are white or black, the wolf doesn't hesitate to eat them if he can.
"Whatever we do, the world will wage war on us. If we stay a long time in the confessional, it will wonder how we can have so much to say; if we stay only a short time, it will say we haven't told everything. It will watch all our actions and at a single little angry word it will protest that we can't get along with anyone. To take care of our own interests will look like avarice, while meekness will look like folly. As for the children of the world, their anger is called being blunt, their avarice economy, their intimate conversations lawful discussions. Spiders always spoil the good work of the bees.
"Let us give up this blind world, Philothea. Let it cry out at us as long as it pleases, like a cat that cries out to frighten birds in the daytime. Let us be firm in our purposes and unswerving in our resolutions. Perseverance will prove whether we have sincerely sacrificed ourselves to God and dedicated ourselves to a devout life. Comets and planets seem to have just about the same light, but comets are merely fiery masses that pass by and after a while disappear, while planets remain perpetually bright. So also hypocrisy and true virtue have a close resemblance in outward appearance but they can be easily distinguished from one another.
"Hypocrisy cannot last long but is quickly dissipated like rising smoke, whereas true virtue is always firm and constant. It is no little assistance for a sure start in devotion if we first suffer criticism and calumny because of it. In this way we escape the danger of pride and vanity, which are comparable to the Egyptian midwives whom a cruel Pharaoh had ordered to kill the Israelites' male children on the very day of their birth. We are crucified to the world and the world must be crucified to us. The world holds us to be fools; let us hold it to be mad."
— — Saint Frances de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
