Practical Theology Quotes

“Love suffers far more for the pains of the beloved than for its own pains.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Other possible means were not lacking on God’s part.” One drop of blood—from Christ’s circumcision at the age of eight days—would have been sufficient to purchase all mankind’s salvation. Why then did He give us twelve quarts instead of one drop? The simple and stunning answer, from Monica Miller’s book on the movie “The Passion of the Christ”, is: Because He had twelve quarts to give. The strategy of war and of games is to win with the minimum possible expense and sacrifice. Love does not seek the minimum but the maximum.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“St. Thomas would have agreed with Leon Bloy, who often wrote that in the end there is only one tragedy in life: not to have been a saint.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The person who is committing the sin of sloth may be doing nothing visible that is wrong. Yet he is rejecting the presence of God, refusing the joy of love.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“That freedom is lost in Hell.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Those who know, do not say; those who say, do not know.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“One of the reasons lust is bad (not the only reason) is that it makes you stupid. Like any addiction, it blinds your vision to everything else and focuses it on the one thing that is the object of your addiction.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The more consciously and freely we choose an evil, the more responsible we are for it and the more guilty we are of it; this is why spiritual sins like pride are greater in guilt than carnal sins.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“When you’re in a burning building looking out of the twentieth story window down to the street and all you see is clouds of billowing smoke, you have to choose to believe the firemen below who tell you they have a safety net and it’s safe to jump. When the clouds of smoke disappear, you don’t have to believe any more: you see it. In this world, it’s a leap in the dark; in the next world, it’s a leap in the light.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“He offers total mercy and forgiveness to all who will accept it by trusting Him and repenting of their sins, but He does not, and cannot, give forgiveness to those who will not receive His gift. Gifts are freely given and freely received. Heaven cannot be forced on a creature with free will.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“the species or nature with which we make our choices is fallen, sinful, selfish, and stupid; and we cannot by our own power attain the deepest and final end of our desires, union with God, eternal happiness. Thus,”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Judaism, the one and only directly and divinely revealed religion in the world,”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The meaning of life is to become a saint.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, “Like a human body.”)”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“ora et labora, prayer and work.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Socrates: “Know thyself.” For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“when the soul no longer conforms to the will of God, the body no longer conforms to the will of the soul.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“For any act to be morally right, three things are necessary: (1) right act, (2) right motive, and (3) right circumstances. If any one of these factors is not right, the act is wrong.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“it is possible to love one’s friend for another reason than God, whereas God is the only reason for loving one’s enemy.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“It is much easier to fail to love your parents than to fail to love your children. That is why there is a commandment that commands love and respect to parents, but not to children. In an age of abortion, there ought to be an eleventh commandment against neglecting, harming, abusing, or even murdering your own children.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“God loves us more than we love Him.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“When I ask my “Catholic” students what they would say to God if they died tonight and God asked them why He should let them into Heaven, fewer than 5% ever even mention Jesus Christ.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The more you treat someone you hate as if you loved them, the more you will find yourself loving them.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Even though we hate some of the things we do or feel, we hate them only because we love ourselves. We feel we are unworthy of such bad stuff.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“[F]or a thing to be evil, one single defect suffices, whereas for it to be good . . . it is not enough for it to be good in one point only, it must be good in every respect. . . .”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The ultimate reason we must become holy is that that is the only way to become real.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Life is a road. The most important thing about a road is its end, where it goes. If the road of life has no real end and goal, it is meaningless. It is a circle or a swamp or a wilderness, not a road.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas

“Earthly life is full of soporifics, anaesthetics, pain-dullers. In fact, compared with Purgatory our whole life on earth will appear to have been life only half awake. In Purgatory we will be fully awake, fully sensitive, and fully cognizant of the evil of all of our sins. Our clear knowledge of God’s brightness and beauty will make our clear knowledge of our own darkness and ugliness more painful than any similar light that shows up our most terrible defects here on earth.”
― Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas