Day 2

     In the first mediation we thought together about the central place of worship in the renewal of the Church…  We only deserve to grow as a Church if our devotion in God’s glory is deep, strong, and sure.   Now we can turn to the second means by which the Church is renewed.

The Church is renewed by clear, exact, and precise thought.  A living Church always has a definite creed.  If we are to be God’s instrument, we must be able to show truth to the minds of men, and to proclaim that Christianity is not just helpful and beneficial; it is true.  And because it is true, it is helpful and beneficial.  Suppose that some hungry soul were to come among us and then turn away sadly saying, “They’re a vague lot without much to say for themselves.”  Weak reasoning can prevent the entrance of many people into the Church; and one of the interesting things to see is how converts to the Church such as C.S. Lewis, become clear expositors of the faith.  They know what led them to the Church and what people on the outside need and are hungry.  When we go forth in missionary endeavor, we must be able to give to people a truer because profounder interpretation of the sickness of our society and the hunger of their own hearts.  As St. Peter said, Be ready always to give and answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

The truth of the matter is that a Church is made by what it believes; and, in the words of P.T. Forsyth, “A Church needs a religion carried upon final and creative truth, not crackling with brisk modernity and steaming with amiable haze.”  We affirm a pattern of belief which supports honesty, and does not leave it floating in mid-air.  God is Truth; and His Son came to win us to obedience to that God.  God asks truth of His children, for are we not members of one another?  The problem of society is the problem of (poor) religious belief.

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Day 1

       First, since the Church was founded by Christ and He is its living head; since it is a divine body meant to be God’s instrument; it will always be renewed from above by waiting upon the Lord, by looking up, by worship.   In prayer and worship, which are means of Grace by which God’s life comes to us, we become what we could not otherwise become.   “This is why every Apostle, every Father of the Church, every leader and theologian who said anything of lasting value or helped to renew the Church – all these men were teachers of prayer and lovers of Scripture through which they communed with their living Lord”.   We revive when we look up, and in the Scriptures, Prayer, Sacrament receive the food which is offered to us.   We revive when we look up and receive to ourselves “the incomprehensible Grandeur of the Lord.”   “Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship.   “For,” says W...
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