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in the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.
BUT as long as you pretend to live in pure autonomy, as your own master, without even a god to rule you, you will inevitably live as the servant of another man or as the alienated member of an organization. Paradoxically it is the acceptance of God that makes you free and delivers you from human tyranny, for when you serve Him you are no longer permitted to alienate your spirit in human servitude. God did not invite the Children of Israel to leave the slavery of Egypt: He commanded them to do so. THE poet enters into himself in order to create. The contemplative enters into God in order to be
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A CATHOLIC poet should be an apostle by being first of all a poet, not try to be a poet by being first of all an apostle. For if he presents himself to people as a poet, he is going to be judged as a poet and if he is not a good one his apostolate will be ridiculed.
IF you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men—you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write only for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and ...
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AT the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves. If they are not sure when someone else may turn around and kill them, they are still less sure when they may turn around and kill themselves. They cannot trust anything, because they have ceased to believe in God.
IT is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves.
It is easy to identify the sin with the sinner when he is someone other than our own self.
As if this were not enough, we make the situation much worse by artificially intensifying our sense of evil, and by increasing our propensity to feel guilt even for things which are not in themselves wrong.
By that time we have created for ourselves a suitable enemy, a scapegoat in whom we have invested all the evil in the world. He is the cause of every wrong. He is the fomentor of all conflict. If he can only be destroyed, conflict will cease, evil will be done with, there will be no more war.
It does not even seem to enter our minds that there might be some incongruity in praying to the God of peace, the God Who told us to love one another as He had loved us, Who warned us that they who took the sword would perish by it, and at the same time planning to annihilate not thousands but millions of civilians and soldiers, men, women and children without discrimination, even with the almost infallible certainty of inviting the same annihilation for ourselves! It may make sense for a sick man to pray for health and then take medicine, but I fail to see any sense at all in his praying for
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First of all, faith is not an emotion, not a feeling. It is not a blind subconscious urge toward something vaguely supernatural.
Hence, in love we can, so to speak, experience in our own hearts the intimate personal secret of the Beloved. And Christ has granted us His Friendship so that He may in this manner enter our hearts and dwell in them as a personal presence, not as an object, not as a “what” but as a “Who.”
If you need to use your imagination in order to remind yourself of the Christ in Whom you believe, go ahead and use it. But if you can exercise your faith in Him without the bother of always conjuring up some picture of Him, so much the better: your faith will be simpler and purer.
Therefore, although it is true that perfection consists in imitating Christ and reproducing Him in our own lives, it is not enough merely to imitate the Christ we have in our imaginations. We read the Gospels not merely to get a picture or an idea of Christ but to enter in and pass through the words of revelation to establish, by faith, a vital contact with the Christ Who dwells in our souls as God. The problem of forming Christ in us is not to be solved merely by our own efforts. It is not a matter of studying the Gospels and then working to put our ideas into practice, although we should try
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It is the Spirit of God that must teach us Who Christ is and form Christ in us and transform us into other Christs.
transformation into Christ is not just an individual affair: there is only one Christ, not many. He is not divided. And for me to become Christ is to enter into the Life of the Whole Christ, the Mystical Body made up of the Head and the members, Christ and all who are incorporated in Him by His Spirit.
THEREFORE if you want to have in your heart the affections and dispositions that were those of Christ on earth, consult not your own imagination but faith. Enter into the darkness of interior renunciation, strip your soul of images and let Christ form Himself in you by His Cross.
Why should I worry about losing a bodily life that I must inevitably lose anyway, as long as I possess a spiritual life and identity that cannot be lost against my desire? Why should I fear to cease to be what I am not when I have already become something of what I am? Why should I go to great labor to possess satisfactions that cannot last an hour, and which bring misery after them, when I already own God in His eternity of joy?
This truth is so tremendous that it is somehow neutral. It cannot be expressed. It is entirely personal. And you have no special desire to tell anybody about it. It is nobody else’s business.
Perhaps you will not be able completely to identify this presence and this continuous action going on within you unless it happens to be taking place formally on the altar before you: but at least then, obscurely, you will recognize in the breaking of the Bread the Stranger Who was your companion yesterday and the day before. And like the disciples of Emmaus, you will realize how fitting it was that your heart should burn within you when the incidents of your day’s work spoke to you of the Christ Who lived and worked and offered His sacrifice within you all the time.
LIFE in Christ is life in the mystery of the Cross. It is not only a hidden supernatural participation in the divine life in eternity, but a participation in a divine mystery, a sacred action in which God Himself enters into time and, with the co-operation of men who have answered His call and have been united in a holy assembly, the Church, carries out the work of man’s redemption.
By rights, there is no reason why a perfect sacrifice should not also be painless: a pure act of adoration, a hymn to the divine glory sung in ecstatic peace. A sacrifice is an action which is objectively sacred, primarily of a social character, and what is important is not so much the pain or difficulty attached to it as the meaning, the sacred significance which not only conveys an idea but effects a divine and religious transformation in the worshipper, thus consecrating and uniting him more closely to God.
The liturgical sacrifice of the Church has at once a mystical and a cosmic significance.
The cosmic aspect of the sacrifice is suggested by the very nature of the gifts offered to God. Bread and wine, the produce of the earth and of man’s toil, are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. Thus the whole creation as well as the labor of man in all his legitimate natural aspirations are in some way elevated, consecrated and transformed. The whole world enters into a hymn of glory in honor of the Creator and Saviour. This is the perfect sacrifice.
Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be His enemies on earth. Suppose they really do hate Him: nevertheless He loves them, and you cannot be united with Him unless you love them too. If you hate the enemies of the Church instead of loving them, you too will run the risk of becoming an enemy of the Church, and of Christ; for He said: “Love your enemies,” and He also said: “He that is not with me is against me.” Therefore if you do not side with Christ by loving those that He loves, you are against Him. But Christ loves all men. Christ died for all men.
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Above all, enter into the Church’s liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life—let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul.
