Sunday, July 17 : Saint John Henry Newman

Every word of Christ is good; it has its mission and its purpose, and does not fall to the ground. It cannot be that He should ever speak transitory words, who is Himself the very Word of God, uttering, at His good pleasure, the deep counsels and the holy will of Him who is invisible. Every word of Christ is good; and did we receive a record of His sayings even from ordinary men, yet we might be sure as to whatever was thus preserved – whether spoken to disciple or enemy, whether by way of warning, advice, rebuke, comfort, argument, or condemnation – that nothing had a merely occasional meaning, a partial scope and confined range… To the contrary, all His sacred speeches, though clothed in a temporary garb, and serving an immediate end, and difficult, in consequence, to disengage from what is temporary in them and immediate, yet all have their force in every age, abiding in the Church on earth, “enduring for ever in heaven,” (cf Mt 24,35; Heb 10,34) and running on into eternity. They are our rule, “holy, just, and good,” “the lantern of our feet and the light of our paths,” (Ps 119[118], 105) in this very day as fully and as intimately as when they were first pronounced. And if this had been so, though mere human diligence had gathered up the crumbs from His table, much more sure are we of the value of what is recorded of Him, receiving it, as we do, not from man, but from God (1Thes 2,13). The Holy Ghost, who came to glorify Christ, and inspired the Evangelists to write, did not trace out for us a barren Gospel; but doubtless, praised be His name, selected and saved for us those words which were to have an especial usefulness in after times, those words which might be the Church’s law, in faith, conduct, and discipline; not a law written in tables of stone, (Ex 24,12) but a law of faith and love, of the spirit, not of the letter (Rom 7,6); a law for willing hearts, which could bear to “live by every word,” however faint and low, “which proceeded from His mouth,” (Dt 8,3; Mt 4,4).
maronite readings – rosary,team