The worst thing churches can do about worship for the sake of their children is to choose music and worship forms according to their taste…

Worship is humble and glad; worship forgets itself in remembering God; worship celebrates truth as God’s truth, not its own. True worship doesn’t put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn’t forced, isn’t half-hearted, doesn’t keep looking at its watch, doesn’t worry what the person in the next pew may be doing. [...]

“To us who can discern he is everywhere beautiful: beautiful in the hands of his parents, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his flagellation, beautiful giving up his spirit, beautiful in carrying the cross,  beautiful on the cross, beautiful in heaven.” Quoted in Richard Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross: the Passion of Christ in [...]

‘Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing [...]

In the first coming He became man, for man’s sake, out of love. The second coming takes place daily, often and many times, in every loving heart, with new graces and with new gifts, as each is able to receive them. The third coming we shall see as the coming in the Judgment, or at [...]

This is from a commissioning sermon delivered to assistant pastors; I thought it perfectly fitted to  our current series, and a good word not only for those of us called to care for others, but for all of us who think of ourselves as Christ’s. To begin with, you [as pastors] are called to be [...]

This is a transcript of a sermon by Nouwen on patience. I read it several years ago, and I have never forgotten it.  I expect you will find it helpful, too. Perhaps Nouwen’s understanding of how fear impossibilizes waiting has been the most instructive for me. Here’s an excerpt: In our particular historical situation, waiting [...]

There are others who, when they perceive their own imperfections, get angry against themselves ; and that, not with humility but with such impatience, as they were fain to become saints in a day. Of these there are many who propose much, and make mighty resolutions, and, as they are not humble and are over-confident [...]

From the renunciation of self-will springs patience; for none can be perfectly patient in all things save the man who has subjected his own will to the will of God, and also in all profitable and seemly things, to the will of all other men. Patience is a peaceful endurance of all things that may [...]

And so, beloved brethren, after the benefits of patience and the evils of impatience have been carefully weighed, let us observe fully and maintain the patience through which we abide in Christ and with Christ are able to come to God. That patience, rich and manifold, is not confined within a narrow compass or restrained by [...]