https://open.substack.com/pub/cslewisofficial/p/learning-to-hear-ourselves-think?r=rd0zg&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

To Find What We Have Lost

WHAT IT MEANS IS that if we come to a church right, we come to it more fully and nakedly ourselves, come with more of our humanness showing, than we are apt to come to most places. We come like Moses with muck on our shoes—foot-sore and travel-stained with the dust of our lives upon us, our failures, our deceits, our hypocrisies, because if, unlike Moses, we have never taken anybody's life, we have again and again withheld from other people, including often even those who are nearest to us, the love that might have made their lives worth living, not to mention our own. Like Moses we come here as we are, and like him we come as strangers and exiles in our way because wherever it is that we truly belong, whatever it is that is truly home for us, we know in our hearts that we have somehow lost it and gotten lost. Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name—something we know best from the empty place inside us all where it belongs. We come here to find what we have lost. We come here to acknowledge that in terms of the best we could be we are lost and that we are helpless to save ourselves. We come here to confess our sins. 

-Frederick Buechner

 I will glory not because I am righteous but because I am redeemed; I will glory not because I am free from sins but because my sins are forgiven me. I will glory not because I have done good nor because someone has done good to me but because Christ is my advocate with the Father and because the blood of Christ has been shed for me.

-St Ambrose of Milan

I see Christianity as a very bright light; particularly bright now because the surrounding darkness is so deep and dense; a brightness that holds my gaze inexorably, so that even if I want to-and I do sometimes want to- I can't detach it. Christ said he was the light of the world, and told us to let our light shine before men. To partake of this light, to keep it in one's eye as the Evangelist told Bunyan's Pilgrim to do, is Heaven; to be cut off from it is Hell - two experiences as recallable and describable as was getting up this morning and driving to Oxford. Away from the light, one is imprisoned in the tiny, desolate dungeon of one's ego; when the light breaks in, suddenly one is liberated, reborn. The shining vistas of eternity open before one, with all mankind for brothers and sisters, a single family with a father in heaven, all, in the truest sense, equal, and deserving of one another's abiding love and consideration.

Words, just words! I can hear you saying. Well, yes, words; but there's something else—a man, who was born and lived like us; whose presence and teaching have continued to shine for generation after generation, just as they did for his disciples and for all who knew and listened to him in Galilee all those centuries ago. A man who died, but who none the less, in some quite unique way, remained, and remains, alive. A man who offered us the mysterious prospect of dying in order to live; who turned all the world's values upside down, telling us that it was the weak, not the strong, who mattered, the simple, not the learned, who understood, the poor, not the rich, who were blessed. A man whose cross, on which he died in agony, became the symbol of the wildest, sweetest hopes ever to be entertained, and the inspiration of the noblest and most joyous lives ever to be lived.

And now? Well, all I can say is, as one ageing and singularly unimportant fellow-man, that I have conscientiously looked far and wide, inside and outside my own head and heart, and I have found nothing other than this man and his words which offers any answer to the dilemmas of this tragic, troubled time. If his light has gone out, then, as far as I am concerned, there is no light.

-Malcolm Muggeridge, 'Unto Caesar' (Nov. 1968)

 “We, who by His will have been called in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, or our own wisdom or understanding or godliness, nor by such deeds as we have done in holiness of heart, but by that faith through which Almighty God has justified all men since the beginning of time. Glory be to Him, forever and ever, Amen.”

-St Clement of Rome, 'Letter to the Corinthians'

 All who run to Christ are saved by his grace and profit from his gift. But those who wish to find justification from the Law will also fall from grace. They will not be able to enjoy the King’s loving-kindness because they are striving to gain salvation by their own efforts; they will draw down on themselves the curse of the Law because by the works of the Law no flesh will find justification.

What does this mean? That he has justified our race not by right actions, not by toils, not by barter and exchange, but by grace alone. Paul, too, made this clear when he said: “But now the justice of God has been made manifest apart from the Law.” But the justice of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ and not through any labor and suffering.” 

-St John Chrysostom on Justification, (347 – 407 AD) Discourses Against Judaizing Christians. Discourse 1:6-II:l

 “But when the Lord Jesus came, He forgave all men that sin which none could escape, and blotted out the handwriting  against us by the shedding of His own Blood. This then is the Apostle’s meaning; sin abounded by the Law, but grace abounded  by Jesus; for after that the whole world became guilty, He took away the sin of the whole world, as John bore ·witness, saying: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Wherefore let no man glory in works, for by his works no man shall be justified, for he that is just hath a free gift, for he is justified by the Bath. It is faith then which delivers by the blood of Christ, for Blessed is the man to whom sin is remitted, and, pardon granted.”  

-St Ambrose of Milan (337-397 AD), Letter 73, to Irenaeus