We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.
This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.
If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That’s not fundamentalism, that’s the law of non-contradiction.
The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man’s head because she turns his heart.
Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces “nice” people, not heroes.
The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.
By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer’s icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it.
Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, “I am.” We are ontological oxymorons.
Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.
It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable.
The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting.
Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts.
Only God may be adored, because only God is unlimited goodness, truth, and beauty, and thus only God deserves unlimited love.
It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.
Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.
Stand in the divine rain, and seeds of wisdom will grow in your soul.
The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.
One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.
We can’t believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can’t love what we believe to be unreal.
If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.
Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.
Conscience is thus explained only as the voice of God in the soul.
The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.
We try too much and trust too little. Count the times God’s Book tells us to “try.” Now count the times it tells us to “trust.
God really performs the miracle of multiplying our time, but only if we give it to him first.
Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.
In an age of hope men looked up at the night sky and saw “the heavens.” In an age of hopelessness they call it simply “space.
America does not know the difference between money and sex. It treats sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and reproduce.
It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.
The practice of the presence of God, though we begin it at special times of prayer, is designed to spill out and over and into all times.
You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.
One moment of prayer, of weak worship, confused contrition, tepid thanksgiving, or pitiful petition will bring us closer to God than all the books of theology in the world.
Praying anywhere” can easily become “praying nowhere”, just as “praying anytime” can easily become “praying at no time”. Everything in general becomes nothing in particular”.
The single most important piece of advice about prayer is one word: Begin!
Léon Bloy wrote: ‘Life holds only one tragedy: not to have been a saint
There is something in us that fears prayer as a maggot fears light. We must do violence to this voice, for it is not ourselves. It is our Enemy.
Prayer is easier than we think. we want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility. We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.
We must pray in order to grow, and we must grow because Infinite Love will not, cannot, settle for less than the greatest joy of which his beloved creature is capable.
God makes it easy to begin: just do it! God also makes it easy to progress in prayer, for he rewards our efforts with peace and joy. And he makes it easiest of all at the end, for it gradually becomes more natural and delightful.
One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility.
Pilate’s skeptical sneer “What is truth?” was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world’s stupidest question was three words; God’s profoundest answer was one Word.
Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God’s grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.
It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.
The deepest reason why the Church is weak and the world is dying is that there are not enough saints. No, that’s not quite honest. The reason is that WE are not saints.
Feelings are wonderful decorations, but they are not a foundation to build on.
Feelings, like waves, look more substantial than they are.
Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time.
Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.
Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.
The fires of hell may be made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God’s truth, hated and fled from in vain by those who love darkness.
It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can’t refuse.
I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.