Luke Mohan > Recent Status Updates

… it is the destiny of a lover to watch unhappiness harden like a cast around his mistress.

Dear God, I’ve tried to love and I’ve made such a hash of it. If I could love you, I’d know how to love them. I believe the legend. I believe you were born. I believe you died for us. I believe you are God. Teach me to love. I don’t mind the pain. It’s their pain I can’t stand… If I could suffer like you, I could heal like you.

Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.

Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions?

Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

Consistency is not truth, but truth is consistency.

Accidents often clothe us with opinions which we wear for a time.

Respond to my love for you by coming to Me as often as you can, by remaining in my presence, by seeking My Face, by resting upon My Eucharistic Heart.

Submit to the discernment of those whom I have set over you, and in all things prefer the mind of the Church to your own thoughts and attractions.

…they were perfect in all that would be generally pleasing, and wanting in all that could give pleasure to Catherine.

“Oh! no, not flirts. A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with another.”

But Catherine did not know her own advantages—did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.

A defense of the novel

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

…the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign if the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase cane back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

…and then in condescension to my paganism, she added…

“perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; … along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

… putting him away, forgetting him, finding you, the past two years with you, all the future with you, all the future, with, or without you, war coming, world ending — sin.

… I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation, while time curbed the artist’s pride and the Philistine’s vulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.

But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that went wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

I often think of that bathroom - the water colors dimmed by steam and the huge towel warming on the back of the chintz armchair - and contrast it with the uniform, clinical, little chambers, glittering with chromium-plate and looking-glass, which pass for luxury in the modern world.

We cannot strive for a philosophical “disinterestedness“ of pure contemplation, but only Christian indifferencia as the sole possible methodological disposition for the reception of the “disinterestedness“ of divine love, which has no end beyond itself and is thus absolute.

The kindnesses at the mission had, by one of the queer twists of war, shown thousands of Chinese the path to God. Grateful men and women wanted to know more about a faith that befriended the poor and grief-stricken, pagan or Christian.

By suffering move to grasp the infinite
And conquer in our minds, when through their pain
These persevere to God and evermore
Become the trophies of creation’s war.

It isn’t a case of miracles not happening – it’s just a case of people calling them something else.

A virtuous man can almost cease to believe in Hell, but he carried Hell about with him. Sometimes at night he dreamed of it. Domine non sum dignus, non sum dignus….

Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill. An animal never knows despair.