Luke Mohan > Recent Status Updates

Sin may recur because the original temptation continues; but quite apart from that, sin of its very nature breeds sin by strengthening sinful habit and weakening the conscience.

But the redemptive effect of suffering lies chiefly in its tendency to reduce the rebel will.

For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.

Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse-though by mercy it may save-those who do the simple evil... Offences must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin.

I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.

So during the celebration, at a sign from the leader, the congregation raise their hands above their head and clap rhythmically and loudly, producing an unfamiliar din within the sanctuary

The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success. Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous are in that danger.

Every vice leads to cruelty.

We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we think we want.

If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.

If He requires us, the requirement is of His own choosing.

I don’t think it’ll stop at silencing and removing non-profit status. There are going to be real martyrs.

Did the archbishop have friends and relatives whose lives violated the commandments? Perhaps in the beginning he had only meant to be kind, to evangelize with empathy. Then, because of the adamancy of God’s laws, he had fallen into the dilemma of kindly men who lack courage to speak the truth in love. Their natural sympathies told them one thing, and their faith told them another.

Art is like a declaration of love, the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that nonetheless reflects the true meaning of life- love and sacrifice.

Do we not love most what is best in another but lacking in ourselves?

Christianity is essentially reality and not merely doctrine.

The beginning of philosophy is wonder.

To philosophize means to withdraw- not from the things of everyday life- but from the currently accepted meaning attached to them, or to question the value placed upon them.

The distinctive mark of a philosophical question is, then, that it brings out what constitutes the essence of spirit: convenire cum omni ente, in harmony with everything that is. One cannot ask a philosophical question or think philosophically without bringing the whole of being into play…

The power or capacity to relate oneself to ‘the’ world is spirit!

What do they not see, who see Him who sees all things?

When a thing contains its own end, or is an end in itself, it can never be made to serve as a means to any other end-just as no one can love someone “in order that.”

Young man, do not forget to pray. Each time you pray, if you do so sincerely, there will be the flash of a new feeling in it, and a new thought as well, one you did not know before, which will give you fresh courage; and you will understand that prayer is education.

The world cannot do without servants, but see to it that your servant is freer in spirit than if he were not a servant. And why can I not be the servant of my servant, and in such wise that he even sees it, and without any pride on my part, or any disbelief on his?