The earth has grown old with its burden of care, But at Christmas it always is young.
Phillips BrooksRead
We may say that on the first Good Friday afternoon was completed that great act by which light conquered darkness and goodness conquered sin. That is the wonder of our Saviour's crucifixion.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the significance of Good Friday as a day when evil was overcome by goodness through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Phillips Brooks emphasizes the transformative power of Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday, portraying it as a pivotal moment in history where light triumphed over darkness and goodness prevailed over sin. This event is depicted as a miraculous act of salvation that underscores the core message of Christianity, illustrating the profound impact of love and sacrifice.
In practice
During a Good Friday service, this quote can be shared to emphasize the significance of Christ's sacrifice.
The earth has grown old with its burden of care, But at Christmas it always is young.
We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.
The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden.
To believe in the God over us and around us and not in the God within us - that would be a powerless and fruitless faith.
To say, 'well done' to any bit of good work is to take hold of the powers which have made the effort and strengthen them beyond our knowledge.
Think of life as a voyage. The truest liver of the truest life is like a voyager who, as he sails, is not indifferent to all the beauty of the sea around him.
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
In Western Catholicism, darkness was evil. In the colonial and imperial context, dark skin was always weak, powerless, subjugated. If you see these images all the time, they become commonplace, and they no longer become a spectacular or sensational thing.
I think, in the United States, we talk about race as a black and white issue... We're generally talking about it as if it's a binary equation whereas, in fact, there's more than two races and, in fact, those races blend together. There are a lot of different ways that people identify.
There's nothing in your life or in our collective problems that does not require our ability to put our attention where we care about. At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time.
I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.