Character and Conduct – 2 May – The Science of Social Life
For manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal nature, and of noble mind.
For manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal nature, and of noble mind.
IF bitterness has crept into the heart in the friction of the busy day’s unguarded moments, be sure it steals away with the setting sun. Twilight is God’s interval for peace-making.
HE that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green.
CONSIDER how much more often you suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
[Fortitude] may be exercised chiefly in doing very little things, whose whole value lies in this, that, if one did not hope in God, one would not do them:
John reminds us with his final few verses, in the culmination of his telling of the Good News, that the Gospel is not a case of ‘seeing is believing’ but, instead, in the words of our Beloved it is a case of ‘believing is not seeing’:
surrounded by the dead and in fear of being killed themselves that they heard the news of the hope that was born in a cave in Bethlehem and escaped from a tomb in Jerusalem.
To be able to provide a home for another is a precious gift, to know that our Beloved provides a home for us makes all our challenges, whether they involve squatting bishops or not, melt away.
This was not the only time since I have been in Holy Orders I have been threatened with a fire arm but it is the one when I prayed the deepest and hardest…
Often, when presented with the challenges brought to us by the anawim, the little poor ones, of God we hesitate to help. We can be tempted to question their motives in the middle of their distress. How many times have the words, ‘But do they really need it’ been spoken about those who queue for food and other help outside churches?