#theology

"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."

"Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun."

"Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians."

"Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts."

"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."

"Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don't need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God. (p. 21)"

"If your doctrine changed for the better yet your character changed for the worse, you changed for the worse."

"It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way."

"Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God."

"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it."

"God's pleasure--the beauty creation possesses in his regard--underlies the distinct being of creation, and so beauty is the first and truest word concerning all that appears within being; beauty is the showing of what is; God looked upon what he had wrought and saw that it was good."

"When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying."

"And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?"

"Our enemies are quite good for relentlessly keeping us sharp and on our toes. This especially goes for sincere philosophers. They use their enemies to challenge their arguments so that they can know the weak points in their own reasoning and how to argue for and strengthen their position. There are just none like one's enemies to always look for his mistakes and do it harder than anyone else."

"The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting."

"Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know."

"There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God."

"It would be unjust toward children to introduce them to Christian teaching and existence only as little pagans and catechumens, in order to leave it up to them to choose the Faith on their own responsibility at a point in time difficult to determine."

"For wordsmiths and masters of words, without necessarily being harsh with words, the words have a tendency to shoot straight to the hearts of people, and this either deeply touches them or deeply angers them. Like the apostles in all their loving controversies are those who are masters of words while combining this gift with truth."