Quote of the Day; Feast of Charles Henry Brent

The Church of the Majority

BY far the largest and strongest portion of the Church is invisible. Its life is altogether hid with Christ in God. The good people of all time are a multitude which no man can number occupied yonder in doing God's work without division of interests. Their relation to us is organic. They cannot live without sharing their life with us. We cannot move without touching them. As they love us, so they pray for us; as we love them, so we pray for them, for prayer is love melted into worship. Nothing retains to better advantage the lives of yesterday in the life of to-day than prayers for the departed. If to them our prayers were nothing more than a caress of love, who would dare withhold them this devotion?

Charles Henry Brent, Bishop of the Philippines, and of Western New York, 1929, whose feast day is today.

This is an excerpt from a book(let) called With God in Prayer. It's quite lovely, except, perhaps, for the Christian Code of Conduct which says, "Look on girlhood as God's chosen vessel of crystal purity. Use womanhood as an inspiration to nobility of thought." But it was 1907; what did I expect?

This quote, though, seems so apropos, given all the infighting in the church. So good to remember that the vast majority of the church is invisible and simply doing God's work without much fuss.