There are no planes in the spiritual life; we are either going uphill or coming down.
Celibacy is like poetry keeping the idea ever in mind like a dream; but marriage uses chisel and brush, concentrating more on marble and canvas. Celibacy jumps to a conclusion like an intuition; marriage, like reason, labors through ebb and flow, step by step.
One would not generally put garbage into the stomach, but too often one will put garbage into the mind.
Our blessed Lord was hopeful about humanity. He always saw men the way He originally designed them. He saw through the surface, grime, and dirt to the real man underneath. He never identified a person with sin. He saw sin as something alien and foreign which did not belong to man. Sin had mastered man but he could be freed from it to be his real self. Just as every mother sees her own image and likeness on her child’s face, so God always saw the divine image and likeness beneath us.
We live in days of assassins’ – where evil is sought in lives more than good to justify a world with a bad conscience.
Let no one think he can be totally indifferent to God in this life and suddenly develop a capacity for Him at the moment of death.
The mystery of the Incarnation is very simply that of God’s asking a woman freely to give Him a human nature.
By teaching the young, she remained young. Virtue does more to preserve youthfulness than all the pomades in Elizabeth Arden’s.
Like train announcers, they know all the stations, but never travel. Head knowledge is worthless, unless accompanied by submission of the will and right action.
In divorce cases, this is called “mental torture” or “domination.” Really, it is egocentricity, in which one ego loves itself in the other ego. The I is projected into the Thou and is loved in the Thou. The Thou is not really loved as a person; it is only used as a means to the pleasure of the I. As soon as the other ceases to exhilarate, the so-called love ceases.
As love comes from knowledge, so hatred comes from want of knowledge. Bigotry is the fruit of ignorance.
Christian love bears evil, but it does not tolerate it. It does penance for the sins of others, but it is not broadminded about sin. Real love involves real hatred: whoever has lost the power of moral indignation and the urge to drive the sellers from the temples has also lost a living, fervent love of Truth.
Love begins when duty finishes. It is a giving of the cloak when the coat is taken. It is walking the extra mile.
When money is needed, a priest thinks nothing of organizing a door-to-door canvas; but how often does he make a door-to-door canvas for converts?
And any form of philanthropy that forgets the doctrine of the common good for the false principle that society is a new entity for which individuals must be sacrificed, sooner or later will be advocating elimination of the unfit; the murder of defective infants – and then we shall have once more a paganism in which mothers will throw their children from Tarpeian Rocks,4 and in which new Herods will arise to practice birth-control as he did – even with the sword.
The crisis in their souls begins at the moment when they either recognize that they have tremendous potentialities not yet exercised or begin to yearn for a religious life which will make greater demands on them. Up to that moment of crisis, they have lived on the surface of their souls. The tension deepens as they realize that, like a plant, they have roots which need greater spiritual depths and branches meant for communion with the heavens above.
Too often, when someone appeals for help in trouble and exposes to the priest his depressed soul, we tell him to pray. Certainly! But do we intercede?
Conscience is always enlightened when sin is seen as hurting someone we love. No sin can touch one of God’s stars or silence one of His words, but it can cruelly wound His heart. Once the Penitent understands this truth, he can see why he has such emptiness and desolation and his soul: he hurt the one he loves.
Repentance is not concerned with consequences. This is what distinguishes it from remorse, which is inspired principally by fear of unpleasant consequences.
The word enough does not exist in Love’s vocabulary.
They excuse themselves, saying they are bored because they are not loved: No! They are bored because they do not love; because they have denied love.