Days gone by

“ This is a cheerful world as I see it from my garden under the shadows of my vines. But if I were to ascend some high mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I should see: brigands on the highways, pirates on the sea, armies fighting, cities burning; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds; selfishness and cruelty and misery and despair under all roofs. It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret…They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of our sinful life…These people, Donatus, are Christians and I am one of them. ”

“ Sanctification is thus simply the art of getting used to justification. It is not something added to justification. It is not the final defense against a justification too liberally granted. It is the justified life. It is what happens when the old being comes up against the end of its self-justifying and self-gratifying ways, however pious. It is life lived in anticipation of the resurrection. ”

“ Heaven and earth may well be astonished that rebels should obtain so great a nearness to the heart of infinite love as to be written upon the palms of his hands. “I have graven thee.” It does not say, “Thy name.” The name is there, but that is not all: “I have graven thee.” See the fulness of this! ”