“[Anglican theology is done] to the sound of church bells, for that is what Christian theology
really is all about – worshipping God the Savior through Jesus Christ in the
theology of the apostolic age.”
– Michael
Ramsey (1904-1988), Anglican Spirit
“Thought is
not all. Conduct is not all. Life is unspeakably impoverished if it is
unhallowed by the sanctities of reverence and worship.”
– Brooke Foss
Westcott (1825-1901), Christus Consummator: Some Aspects of the Work and Person
of Christ in Relation to Modern Thought
“One’s first
duty is adoration, and one’s second duty is awe and only one’s third duty is
service. And that for those three things and nothing else, addressed to God and
no one else, you and I and all other countless human creatures evolved upon the
surface of this planet were created. We observe then that two of the three
things for which our souls were made are matters of attitude, of relation:
adoration and awe. Unless these two are right, the last of the triad, service,
won’t be right. Unless the whole of your . . . life is a movement of praise and
adoration, unless it is instinct with awe, the work which the life produces
won’t be much good.”
– Evelyn
Underhill (1875-1841), Concerning the Inner Life
“I feel the
regular, steady, docile practice of corporate worship is of utmost importance
for the building-up of your spiritual life…no amount of solitary reading makes
up for humble immersion in the life and worship of the Church.”
– Evelyn
Underhill (1875-1941), The Letters of Evelyn Underhill
“The Eucharist
divorced from life loses reality; life devoid of worship loses direction and
power. It is the worshiping life that can transform the world.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Citizen and Churchman
“Both for
perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and
spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It
is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with
His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart
to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose — and all of this gathered up
in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and
therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is our original sin
and the source of all actual sin. Yes — worship in spirit and truth is the way
to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Readings in St. John’s Gospel
“It is mere
humbug to say that we will serve God by our conduct but cannot find time for
prayer and worship. If that is all we can do, we shall serve him just as much
as we have been doing – which has brought the world to the mess it is now in.
We must have our times of companionship with God.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), The Hope of a New World
“Be not
discouraged if but few come to the Solemn Assemblies, but go to the House of
Prayer, where God is well known for a sure Refuge: Go, though you go alone, or
but with one besides your self; and there as you are God’s Remembrancer, keep
not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, till He make Jerusalem a
praise in the earth.”
– Thomas Ken
(1637-1711), A Pastoral Letter from the Bishop of Bath and Wells to his Clergy
concerning their Behaviour during Lent
“God is
available to all of us. God says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Each one
of us wants and needs to give ourselves space for quiet. We can hear God’s
voice most clearly when we are quiet, uncluttered, undistracted—when we are
still. Be still, be quiet, and then you begin to see with the eyes of the
heart.
One image that
I have of the spiritual life is of sitting in front of a fire on a cold day. We
don’t have to do anything. We just have to sit in front of the fire and then
gradually the qualities of the fire are transferred to us. We begin to feel the
warmth. We become the attributes of the fire. It’s like that with us and God.
As we take time to be still and to be in God’s presence, the qualities of God
are transferred to us.
Far too
frequently we see ourselves as doers. As we’ve seen, we feel we must endlessly
work and achieve. We have not always learned just to be receptive, to be in the
presence of God, quiet, available, and letting God be God, who wants us to be
God. We are shocked, actually, when we hear that what God wants is for us to be
godlike, for us to become more and more like God. Not by doing anything, but by letting God be
God in and through us.”
– Desmond Tutu
(1931-2921), God has a Dream
“Prayer is
this constant return to the place where one’s projects are frail and fallible
and where one can only fall on God’s mercy. That’s the place God works. And God
works powerfully there.”
– Sarah
Coakley (1951 - ), Prayer as Divine Propulsion: An Interview with Sarah
Coakley, Part I, The Other Journal
“Sure,
sometimes it is great when, in prayer, we can express to God just what we feel;
but better still when, in the act of praying, our feelings change. Liturgy is
not, in the end, open to our emotional whims. It re-points the person praying,
taking him somewhere else.”
– Lauren
Winner (1976 - ), Mudhouse Sabbath
“We are given
the gift of having the Spirit pray to God through us. Simply ask to join in the
communion of the Trinity that prays eternally in perfect love. It is truly
amazing grace that we can enter this eternal and dynamic prayer.”
– Patricia Lyons, What Is Evangelism?
“When we are
not able to do any other thing for men's behalf, when through maliciousness or
unkindness they vouchsafe not to accept any other good at our hands, prayer is
that which we always have in our power to bestow, and they never in theirs to
refuse.”
– Richard
Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesial Polity
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8. Sacramental
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