Christianity doesn't start by telling people what they must do; it starts by telling people what God has done for them, to save them ... Christianity is a religion of grace.
Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household.
That is so true. It is only once one recognizes God's grace and mercy that you begin to understand, love, and want to please the one who loves you so much.
Do not be shy of the contest, if you truly love the prize. Let knowledge of the reward set the mind on fire to accomplish the work. What we desire, and wish for, and seek, will be hereafter; but what we are ordered to do, for the sake of that which will be hereafter, must be now.St. Augustine, Sermon
I like that idea of being ablaze working for a goal. It happens to me now and again, but probably not as often as it should when I am seeking the kingdom of God.
Again with a good Murderbot quote. And this one works for all of us most of the time.Overse caught up with me and asked, "Are you all right? ... Just remember you're not alone here."
I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90% of my problems are.
Martha Wells, Network Effect
At every turn, while he was investigating the background for his study of Thomas Nashe, he would encounter the Church — what Chesterton called (another book title) The Thing. It was everywhere. At one point, he later told me (and he was never very specific just when that point occurred), he decided that the thing had to be sorted out or he couldn't rest. Either it ws true, or it wasn't. Either the entire matter was true, all of it, exactly as the Church claimed, or it was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on a gullible mankind. With that choice clearly delineated, he set out to find which was the case. What came next was not more study, but testing.I simply absolutely love this guy's sheer logic. Here's how it's supposed to work. So let's find out.
The matter had to be tested — on its own terms: that is, by prayer. He told me that the principal prayer that he used was not some long or complex formula, but simply, "Lord, please, send me a sign." He reported that, almost immediately, not one but a deluge of signs arrived. And they continued to arrive unabated for a long time. As to just what the signs consisted in and what happened next, well, some things must remain private. The reader may deduce the rest from the fact of his conversion. ...
I feel about Catholicism as G. K. Chesterton did—that it encourages an exuberance, a joy about the gift of life. I think my conversion was a natural growth. Even in the darkest hours of my childhood, I was an irrepressible optimist, always able to find something to fill me with amazement, wonder and delight. When I came to the Catolic faith, it explained to me why I always had—and always should have—felt exuberant and full of hope.Rereading an old quote journal I came across this quote which reminded me of blogging days of old, when it was a new discovery that Dean Koontz is Catholic. This must be why his horror novels, though they may contain some very bad things indeed, have characters who are themselves full of hope and determination.
Dean Koontz
There was a tendency to call upon spirits of terror and compulsion. There is always a sort of dim idea that these darker powers will really do things, with no nonsense about it. In the interior psychology of the Punic peoples this strange sort of pessimistic practicality had grown to great proportions. In the New Town, which the Romans called Carthage, as in the parent cities of Phoenicia, the god who got things done bore the name Moloch, who was perhaps identical with the other deity whom we know as Baal, the Lord. The Romans did not at first know quite what to call him or what to make of him; they had to go back to the grossest myth of Greek or Roman origins and compare him to Saturn devouring his children. But the worshippers of Moloch were not gross or primitive. They were members of a mature and polished civilization, abounding in refinements and luxuries; they were probably far more civilized than the Romans. And Moloch was not a myth. These highly civilized people really met together to invoke the blessing of heaven on their empire by throwing hundreds of their infants into a large furnace. We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimney-pot hats and mutton-chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o’clock to see a baby roasted alive.What is terrible is that today we don't have to imagine Moloch worshippers being civilized the way Chesterton did. We've got abortion clinics all over the country.
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
A colleague, Joe Keogh, wrote in the Ottawa, Ontario G. K. Chesterton Newsletter of a curious exchange between my father [Marshall McLuhan] and Toronto's then Archbishop Pocock. The good Bishop, it is said, once asked that given John's famous prologue to the fourth gospel, did this not indicate that Christ Himself is the archetypal example of the medium as message? He readily assented.Isn't that just the best? I love the way this guy (and that bishop) thought. And the McLuhan book is excellent.
Introduction to The Medium and the Light by Marshall McLuhan
In truth there are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.Ain't that the truth!
G.K. Chesterton
A man may be profoundly gifted, have a strong consciousness of self, undergo deep natural-religious experiences — until he has more than these, compared to the inwardness under discussion, he remains superficial. On the other hand, the man of strictly commpnplace natural gifts has that "dimension" in him when he believes in the God of revelation and loves Him. The point is such that interiority is not psychologically deeper, or spiritually nobler, but essentially different from any natural interiority; it is a gift of grace from the Spirit.So true.Romano Guardini, The Conversion of Augustine
Is not remembering precisely the retaiing of corporeal things in an incorporeal manner?Um — hey, it is! So simple but so deep also!Romano Guardini, The Conversion of Augustine
God's knowing is judicial. It is the act by which He measures His creature by the norm of the essential truth which He has established for it. His gaze judges, discards, and confirms. If this is so, confession is the act by which the creature places himself voluntarily in God's truth. Now not only is it known by Hm whose view is boundless, but it also deserves to be known by Him. It allies itself with the all-perceiving power of God's truth against its own shame and self-assertion.This is a really great book with many deep insights that seem to spring right into my heart. What an elegant way to say what I've often been told — God already knows everything you have done. Confession is for your benefit, not His.Romano Guardini, The Conversion of Augustine
“You want something. The gods’ tongues can grow quite honeyed, when they want something. When I wanted something—when I prayed on my face, arms out flung, in tears and abject terror—for years—where were You then? Where were the gods the night Teidez died?” [Ista said.]Am I one of those who turn aside? Or who go the last few steps, even when it is brutally difficult?
“The Son of Autumn dispatched many men in answer to your prayers, sweet Ista. They turned aside upon their roads, and did not arrive. For He could not bend their wills, nor their steps. And so they scattered to the winds as leaves do.”
His lips curved up, in a smile more deathly serious than any scowl Ista had ever seen. “Now another prays, in despair as dark as yours. One as dear to me as Teidez was to my Brother of Autumn. And I have sent—you. Will you turn aside? As Teidez’s deliverance did? At the last, with so few steps left to travel?”
Silence fell between them.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
Having given up God so as to be self-sufficient, man has lost track of his soul. He looks in vain for himself. He finds masks, and behind masks, death.There could hardly be a better summary of the modern condition. This, too, is one that is worthy of meditation during Lent. The path to the Cross is hard, no doubt. But what lies beyond is not death, but life.
Jacques Mauritain
What do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good. Have they never even been to a dentist?
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Everything that happens ... shows beyond mistake that you can't shut out the world; that you are in it, to be of it; that you get into a false position the moment you try to sever yourself from it; and that you must mingle with it, and make the best of it, and make the best of yourself into the bargain.Amen. Amen.
Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins,September 6, 1858
... and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on the shelf, like one who cannot.I was really surprised to see the emphasis on reading and books in the early chapters of Our Mutual Friend. The way some people yearn after reading, like Mr. Boffin and Lizzie, mades me realize afresh what a blessing it is to have such a literate population. Even if much of it rarely cracks a book, they don't have to have someone else read them street signs.
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
"He must have been an exceedingly clever fellow," said Ferdinand Barnacle.
Arthur ... was silent.
"A consummate rascal of course," said Ferdinand, "but remarkably clever! One cannot help admiring the fellow. Must have been such a master of humbug. Knew people so well—got over them so completely—did so much with them!"
In his easy way, he was really moved to genuine admiration.
"I hope," said Arthur, "that he and his dupes may be a warning to people not to have so much to do with them again."
"My dear Mr. Clennam," returned Ferdinand, laughing, "have you really such a verdant hope? The next man who has as large a capacity and as genuine a taste for swindling, will succeed as well. Pardon me, but I think you really have no idea how the human bees will swarm to the beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies the complete manual of governing them. When they can be got to believe that the kettle is made of the precious metals, in that fact lies the whole power of men like our late lamented. No doubt there are here and there," said Ferdinand politely, "exceptional cases, where people have been taken in for what appeared to them to be much better reasons; and I need not go far to find such a case; but, they don't invalidate the rule."
Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.If you remember no other quotes, remember this one. I'm not especially a fan of Thomas Merton one way or t'other but he summed up my Catholic life right there. And when I remember this simple truth, which I can forget in busy everyday life just life everyone else ... when I remember it - my life is better and simpler and truer.
Thomas Merton
Seen from the outside, the quest for religious solace looks preposterous. Soren Kierkegaard said that religion has a truth so purely interior that it approaches madness.Yes. Like being in love, it's almost impossible to explain this to someone who hasn't experienced it.
Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World
It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.You'd think this was written by Ray Bradbury instead of Stephen King. Or at least I would've. King tells his vampire story with a prose style that is direct and to the point, for the most part. However, every so often he veers off into a bit of poetic prose like this. Those are gems of captured image.
Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot
