On his death-bed, a sick man was brought to him to be healed. His first reaction was to joke: ‘If I had the gift you say I have, I would be the first to try it on myself; but, as soon as he heard that the man had been told to come to him by a dream, he laid his hands on him.
Augustine of Hippo, Brown, (1966) 413
Perhaps God granted Augustine to heal others, but not himself… According to Possidius’ Life of Augustine the man was healed
Suppose brethren, a man should make a ring for his betrothed, and she should love the ring more wholeheartedly than the betrothed who made it for her….Certainly, let here love his gift: but, if she should say, “The ring is enough. I do not want to see his face again” what would we say of her?…The pledge is given her by the betrothed just that, in his pledge, he himself may be loved. God, then, has given you all these things. Love him who made them.
Augustine of Hippo, Brown, (1966) 326
Far be it from us to think that God would hate in us that which distinguishes us from the beasts…. Love understands wholeheartedly.
Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown, (1966) 277.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your…mind. Matthew 22:37
Augustine saw his role as preacher, and the role of all preachers, as feeding the flock. The scriptural idea of breaking bread or feeding the multitude drives his view of preaching. “I go to feed so that I can give you to eat,” he writes. “I am the servant, the bringer of food, not the master of the house. I lay out before you that from which I also draw my life.” He told Jerome, “If I do gain any stock of knowledge, I pay it out immediately to the people of God.”
Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown, (1966) 252.
All is God—Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God.
‘Mother’ Theresa, 12/4/89 Time Magazine Interview with Edward Desmond, pp. 11, 13
Her universalism was taught on many occasions:
“If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we are converting. We become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are …. What God is in your mind you must accept” (from Mother Teresa: Her People and Her Work, by Desmond Doig, [Harper & Row, 1976, p.156]).
“I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you’ve found God, it’s up to you to decide how to worship him.” (“Mother Teresa Touched Other Faiths,” AP, Sept. 7, 1997).
“I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic” (A Simple Path, p. 31).
“If the individual thinks and believes that his or her way is the only way to God, then that is their way of salvation” (pp. 74-75). (Mark Michael Zima, Mother Teresa: The Case for the Cause)
Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.
Jesuit motto
We might hope that if the child fell into other than Jesuit hands that good might be done instead.
Setting aside all personal judgment of our own, we must keep our minds prepared and ready to obey in all things the true Bride of Christ our Lord, which is our holy mother, the Catholic Church…. To make perfectly sure of our orthodoxy, if the Catholic Church proclaims something to be black which appears to be white, we must accept that it is black. For we believe that there is one and the same Spirit in Christ our Lord the Husband, and in the Church His Bride. This Spirit governs and guides our souls to salvation; the same Spirit and the same Lord who gave the Ten Commandments guides and rules our holy mother the Church.
Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises
Faith misplaced!
Boxley is best known through its celebrated Rood of Grace, a cross with an image supposed to be miraculously gifted with movement and speech. More than a century before the Dissolution the abbey is spoken (fn. 25) of as ‘called the abbey of the Holy Cross of Grace.’ Archbishop Warham, writing (fn. 26) to Wolsey in connexion with claims against the abbey, says that it was much sought after by visitors to the Rood from all parts of the realm, and so he would be sorry to put it under an interdict. He calls it ‘so holy a place where so many miracles be showed.’ But the image proved to be a gross imposture. Geoffrey Chamber, employed in defacing the monastery and plucking it down, wrote (fn. 27) to Cromwell on 7 February, 1538, that he found in it certain engines and old wire, with old rotten sticks in the back, which caused the eyes to move and stir in the head thereof, ‘like unto a lively thing,’ and also, the nether lip likewise to move as though it should speak, ‘ which was not a little strange to him and others present.’ He examined the abbot and old monks, who declared themselves ignorant of it; and considering that the people of Kent had in time past a great devotion to the image and used continual pilgrimages there, he conveyed it to Maidstone that day, a market day, and showed it to the people, ‘ who had the matter in wondrous detestation and hatred so that if the monastery had to be defaced again they would pluck it down or burn it.’ The image was afterwards taken to London and exhibited during a sermon by the bishop of Rochester at St. Paul’s Cross, arid then cut to pieces and burnt. (fn. 28) The news of the exposure appears to have been widely spread, and probably nothing was more damaging to the case for the monasteries.
Such were the con tricks used before the Reformation to deceive the people. Similarly the Blood of Hailes
