It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It wasContinue reading “Corrie ten Boom on Forgiveness”
Author Archives: Stefan Gramenz
St. Augustine on Matthew 22
Let charity be advanced, so be it nourished, that being nourished it may be perfected; so be “the wedding garment” put on; so be the image of God, after which we were created, by this our advancing, engraven anew in us. For by sin was it bruised, and worn away. How is it bruised? howContinue reading “St. Augustine on Matthew 22”
Not at home, but in a passageway
Just as someone who goes to meet somebody stands in the road and awaits him until he comes, so he who believes in Christ ought to live in this age as a pilgrim and be situated not at home but in a passageway. For this reason, when the Jews were also about to leave Egypt,Continue reading “Not at home, but in a passageway”
Passing Away by Christina Rossetti
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:Changes, beauty, and youth, sapped day by day:Thy life never continueth in one stay.Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to greyThat hath won neither laurel nor bay?I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decayOn my bosom forContinue reading “Passing Away by Christina Rossetti”
A Collect for Advent I
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in hisContinue reading “A Collect for Advent I”
The Altar is the place where heaven is opened up
The altar is the place where heaven is opened up. It does not close off the church, but opens it up–and leads it into the eternal liturgy. Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy
Sleep in the Natural and Spiritual Sense
Someone who sleeps in a natural sense does not see or perceive any of the things that are here on earth. He lies prostrate like a dead man, pays no attention to anything, all the while involved with utterly useless images and forms, dreams and visions, instead of real things. And when he wakes, theseContinue reading “Sleep in the Natural and Spiritual Sense”
The Donkey by G. K. Chesterton
When fishes flew and forests walkedAnd figs grew upon thorn,Some moment when the moon was bloodThen surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cryAnd ears like errant wings,The devil’s walking parodyOn all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth,Of ancient crooked will;Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,I keep my secret still.Continue reading “The Donkey by G. K. Chesterton”
Madeleine L’Engle on Palm Sunday
On Palm Sunday in the Cathedral the congregation participates in acting out the Gospel, and we are the mob, and I choke as I shout out, “His blood be on us, and on our children. Crucify him! Crucify him!” I choke not because it is something I would never under any circumstances say, but becauseContinue reading “Madeleine L’Engle on Palm Sunday”
R. S. Thomas – The Coming
And God held in his handA small globe. Look, he said.The son looked. Far off,As through water, he sawA scorched land of fierceColour. The light burnedThere; crusted buildingsCast their shadows: a brightSerpent, A riverUncoiled itself, radiantWith slime. On a bareHill a bare tree saddenedThe sky. Many peopleHeld out their thin armsTo it, as though waitingForContinue reading “R. S. Thomas – The Coming”
Locus Communis 