Thursday, September 27, 2007
Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660

If you wanted a label for us, would you find a better than a Sadducean Age? We also are not worrying about immortality, hardly believe in it, or at least are not sure; we, too, have limited ourselves to this dust-speck of time, leaving unclaimed the vast inheritance beyond of which Christ told us; we, too, are putting all our zeal and passion and enthusiasm into things of this earth here, quite sure that that is the only road to progress, and that this everlasting chatter about the soul is quite beside the point. And they are all so earnest and so certain, work so hard, are animated often by such lofty motives, are so sure that there is really no manner of need for Christ; that given this, and this, and this, each of them pushing forward his particular panacea—the world will manage very well; that to talk about Christ, and changing people’s hearts, and making us new creatures, is merely to lose precious time and wander from the practical into vague day-dreaming of which nothing comes. And year by year their voices grow a little harder, and they eye Christ more and more askance, feel sourly that He is a bit of a nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress, keeping people quiet who should not be quiet, lulling them with these dim, immaterial, fantastic, spiritual hopes of His which they think have no body, and can not have. Once more the whisper grows, “Were He not far better away?” Meantime we can ignore Him, they say; and they do.

... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), The Galilean Accent, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1926, p. 129 (see the book; see also Isa. 29:13-14; 1 Cor. 2:8; Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 6:3-5,20-21; 2 Pet. 2:1-3; more at Authenticity, Immortality, Worldly)

 
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Last updated: 11/03/15

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