Thomas Traherne: Centuries No. 99

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Thomas Traherne: Centuries No. 99

This sense that God is so great in goodness, and we so great in glory, as to be His sons, and so rich as to live in communion with Him, and so individually united to Him, that He is in us, and we in Him, will make us do all our duties not only with incomparable joy but courage also. It will fill us with zeal and fidelity, and make us to overflow with praises. For if which one cause alone the knowledge of it ought infinitely to be esteemed. For to be ignorant of this, is to sit in darkness, and to be a child of darkness: it maketh us to be without God in the world, exceeding weak, timorous, and feeble, comfortless and barren, dead and unfruitful, lukewarm, indifferent, dumb, unfaithful. To which I may add, that it makes us uncertain. For so glorious is the face of God and true religion, that it is impossible to see it, but in transcendent splendour. Nor can we know that God is till we see Him infinite in goodness. Nothing therefore will make us certain of His Being but His Glory.

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Is This Child Dead Enough

If you voted for President Obama, please read this article.  If you are a citizen of the USA, please read this article.  If you have friends who are U.S. Americans, please read this article.  Read and share far and wide:

American Immorality is at Its Peak: 

Is This Child Dead Enough for You?

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Read this article

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Read this article:

Man in Vegetative State Communicates with Doctors via MRI

It is wonderful to know that it is possible, but it is also haunting in that one cannot help but wonder what would have been learned from the martyr Terri Schindler Schiavo.

As the article notes, the textbooks will need to be rewritten.

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From Thomas Traherne

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12.

By corrupting themselves and turning after vanity they have Blinded the world and me in like manner.  Thick Darkness covereth the Nations, and Gross Darkness the people. which is chiefly contracted by their Inventing and following other Treasures, for by magnifying Riches of their own Devising, they have Covered the Treasures of Innocent Eden, forgotten the Delights of God, Buried in oblivion themselves and the world; Eclipsed the clear and open Joys of True Felicity.

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Customary Blessings

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The Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham has finally made its way into my hands, and I congratulate the British Ordinariate on producing a handsome edition of a daily prayer book.  It is typeset not like The Book of Common Prayer but rather in a format that is a sibling of the ASB, Celebrating Common Prayer, and Common Worship.  

It is clearly a book of blessings for those who will use it.  In the form of a customary these forms of prayer remain open for correction, expansion, and editing in a future common volume for the (former Anglican) Ordinariate Catholics.  That is a very good thing.

I do not think it is the best book possible, but it is an excellent book, a most excellent book.  It is hampered by a calendar that has a long way to go before it is the sort of Kalendar that fully embraces the ancient British saints -- to highlight one deficiency.  The choice of readings from 'Anglican worthies' is perhaps the strongest point of the Customary in my opinion, and I hope the idea will be expanded broader ways in whatever future volumes are published.

I am glad to see plainchant included although as a musician I disagree with some of the ways in which the chant is adapted to English.   But my objections are very few, and I pray this customary will be a harbinger of the complete recovery of the body of Sarum chant within the Ordinariates in both Prayer Book English and Latin.

After I have had more time to live and pray with the customary, I will reflect upon it in a future post.  For now I congratulate the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham for publishing a fine volume for local use within its Ordinariate boundaries.  I especially commend them for not trying to cover everything and do everything that might be done in such a volume.  It reads in some ways as a prospectus for the future and as such is a truly positive contribution.

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