Christ is Risen!

Our meeting will be this evening at approximately 7:30 pm (right after the evening Mass). We continue our reading of St Francis of Assisi. This month we will be discussing chapter 7, The Three Orders.

Here is the link, once again, to the archival copy of an early edition on the book where you “flip” the pages of the book, as it were.

I’ll close with a couple more passages from Orthodoxy. I hope to see you all soon.

Yours,

Spencer

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. . . . The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“​Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.​”
– G. K. Chesterton,​ What’s Wrong with the World​