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Quotes by Theologian
"Even if it's a little thing do something for those who have need of help something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it."
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"Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events."
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"Our ordinary and reasonable service to God may actually compete against our total surrender to Him."
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"It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ."
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"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
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"Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us."
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"We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace."
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"Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality."
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"As we acquire more knowledge things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious."
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"Beware of surrender that is motivated by personal benefits that may result."
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"God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly."
17
"We act like pagans in a crisis--only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God."
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"Prayer is God's answer to our poverty not a power we exercise to obtain an answer."
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"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?"
17
"The touchstone of the Holy Spirit's work in us is the answer to our Lord's question: "Who do men say that the Son of Man is? Our Lord makes human destiny depend on that one thing, Who men say He is, because the revelation of Who Jesus is is only given by the Holy Spirit."
17
"Watch your motive before God have no other motive in prayer than to know Him."
17
"A mystic doesn't say 'I believe. They say 'I know. A true mystic will ironically speak with that self - confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self - confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general."
17
"If you do not acquire good training in detachment, you may attach to all the wrong things."
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"The Lord's questions always reveal the true me to myself."
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"We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts."
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"Prayer is the supreme activity of all that is noblest in our personality and the essential nature of prayer is faith."
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"He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy right now, but He's continually working out His ultimate perfection for you..."
17
"Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness."
17
"What a blessed habit I have found my prayer list, morning by morning, it takes me via the Throne of all Grace straight to the intimate personal heart of each one mentioned here, and I know that He Who is not prescribed by time and geography answers immediately."
17
"When God brings a time of waiting, and appears to be unresponsive, don't fill it with busyness, just wait."
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"The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus will never draw attention to himself but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control."
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"The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold."
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"The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience."
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"But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father."
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"The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime."
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"Whatever good, true, or perfect things we can say about humanity or creation, we can say of God exponentially. God is the beauty of creation and humanity multiplied to the infinite power."
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"The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God's Word."
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"We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours."
16
"I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God."
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"By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive."
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"The greatest answer to prayer is that I am brought into a perfect understanding with God and that alters my view of actual things."
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"Three conditions are necessary for Penance: contrition, which is sorrow for sin, together with a purpose of amendment; confession of sins without any omission; and satisfaction by means of good works."
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"If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal list, you can let go of the irritations on the small lists of time. Ultimate security allows you to suffer small insecurity without tremendous effort. If you are tethered at some center point, it is amazing how far out you can fly and not get lost."
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"Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it."
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"Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you. Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus, I've lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit's vision, Gazing on the Crucified."
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"This seems to have been St. Augustine's very notion of 'memory, ' not just nostalgia for some past moment, but connecting past, present, and future in one complete contemplative knowing."
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"Advent creates people, new people."
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"A time is coming when the whole round world will know that God reigns and that God is Love, when hell and heaven, life and death, sin and salvation, will be read and understood aright at last."
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"Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand-from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: 'How can I be good?' and 'How can I do something good?' Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: 'What is the will of God?"
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"Never ask another person's advice about anything God makes you decide before Him."
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"It is not at all surprising that the disciples imagined that the law had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless."
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"If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation."
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"My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life."
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"If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not "a little bit of love," but major surgery. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way- not in a human way that ignores God."
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"The grace you had yesterday will not be sufficient for today."
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