Luke Mohan > Recent Status Updates

“poetry should not be the avoidance of preciseness; it invokes all the canons of order.”

“Chesterton held St. Francis up before the moderns who were brooding the dehumanizing calculations which make such fainthearted glances at true justice.”

“He is cavalier with facts, not because he meant to be cavalier, but because he wanted to be a cavalier. The pen is not mightier than the sword, it is the sword’s sword; and while accuracy scores points in fencing, acuteness is what counts in a real duel.”

“[Naturalists] in their own way…loved St. Francis, but they loved him as does any modern critic who, in the words of James J. Daly, S.J., “understands Tolstoy and does not love him, and loves Francis and does not understand him”.”

“…he had absorbed many things, but he wanted to be absorbed by “The Thing” behind them, the enclosure of eternity and the open door of history known to mankind as the Catholic and apostolic Church.”

O justice and innocence, lovely and graceful to the light of honest eyes; you I crave, with a fullness that can never be filled.

When we acknowledge that we are completely dependent on God, not only is that “right and just,” but it leads us to love him more! (Not a quote)

What then did I enjoy in my thieving?…Was it that I, a captive, should mimic a crippled liberty, doing something unlawful and not being punished for it—a gloomy likeness of omnipotence?

The pears were beautiful, but they were not what my miserable soul was craving.

Friendship among men, too, is sweet, because of the dear bond that binds many hearts in one.

My soul was vile…seeking nothing in shame but the very shame.

…a fog shut out from me the peaceful skies of your truth, and my iniquity came forth from me, as from a greasy fatness

I was ashamed among the boys my age to be any less shameful than they were.

For men it [lust] is but a blot, a fault, but by your laws quite forbidden.

…your omnipotence is not far from us, even when we are far from you.

Can it be that, from long habit, he picks and chooses from among her gestures and her words, keeping for use only those that feed his grievances and perpetuate his resentments? There is a fatal tendency in all of us to simplify others, to eliminate in them everything that might soften the indictment, give some human lineaments to the caricature that our hatred craves in order to justify itself....

Husbands and wives of long standing never hate one another as much as they think they do.

“A shooting star!” cried Phili: “I had no time to make a wish.”
“One never does have time,” said Janine.

But when a man is as hard as I am… when he can inspire only hatred and create about himself nothing but a wasteland, then he has no defense against the onrush of hope…

Perhaps, only if we have conquered the body can we believe in the body’s resurrection. The punishment of those who have abused it is that they cannot even imagine that it will rise again.

Nobody can go on indefinitely believing in himself unless he gets some help from outside.

"However long your life, you will never know any bliss comparable to these few hours. Drink them to the dregs...Quench your thirst once and for all, for you will never again have an opportunity to drink."

The love that I felt was all mixed up with the love that I inspired—or thought I inspired. There was nothing real about my own feelings. What counted for me was my belief in the love that you felt. I caught my reflection in the mirror of somebody else's personality, and in the image thus presented there was nothing repulsive. In that blissful state of relaxation I blossomed and flowered.

The Church comes into being from the Eucharist. She receives her unity and her mission from the Eucharist. She is derived from the Last Supper, that is to say, from Christ's death and Resurrection, which he anticipated in the gift of his body and blood.

The blood of animals could neither “atone” for sin nor bring God and men together. It could only be a sign of hope, anticipating a greater obedience that would be truly redemptive.

…by way of anticipation, he can already distribute himself, because he is already offering his life—himself—and in the process receiving it again. (See Jn 10:18)

[God] waits for man’s free choice, and whenever the answer is “no”, he opens up a new path of love.

Fiedler then claims that the idea of expiation is incompatible with Jesus’ image of God, and here many exegetes and systematic theologians would agree with him…[However] from the point of view of historical evidence, nothing could be more authentic than this Last Supper tradition. But the idea of expiation is incomprehensible to the modern mind.