Eclipse of the Sun Quotes

“Christianity is not a code of ethics for improving the behavior of humanity. Our faith is much more than that. It is light breaking into darkness. It is salvation. It is fire.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“Then Mercy itself took flesh and came among them, for he was love, and he felt everything that they had felt. He was love, and their descendants killed him, and to this day there are many who kill him, and also do they kill his image upon sight, for he is love, and men prefer darkness to light and fear to love.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“They blamed each other, and they blamed the serpent, and for a time they blamed the One who had made them. The woman said to the man, “It is”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“No. The initial impulse comes from God. We are called by Love himself. Our task is to come to him. He will lead us to the tabernacle of the heart. We need only ask.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The archbishop paused. “Teach your people to give themselves totally to God. Teach them to find his heart.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“Father, the only indestructible sanctuary is in the heart.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“But at some point every soul was put to some ultimate test, each must turn and face its eternal foe in a definitive struggle between radical terror and radical faith. And in such combat ordinary human strategies would always prove to be ineffective; moreover, by relying on them, one could easily be misled into a state of false security—and thus be doubly defeated.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The Lord wanted trust, above all trust. And this trusting was the foundation of the personal holiness from which right action flowed. By seeking solutions before the foundation was firm, he had been wanting to bypass faith and to grasp at knowledge, as if knowledge alone could save. This was an old error, a subtle one, part of fallen human nature. It was like building a house on sand, and he now saw that in his anxiety to preserve the flock from trials, to build a shelter for them, any shelter, he might have fallen into the trap of operating solely from fear. What was the nature of this fear? That trials were so annihilating that they must be avoided at all costs? That God could not, or would not, save? That he was not with his people?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“Why don’t you talk to him? You’ve already done it once, and the Lord seems to take special interest in newly hatched prayer warriors. He wants them to know he’s really there. So pray away, Alice, and we just might stumble upon some unsuspected solutions.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“You see, I think there is something in the psyche, one might even say in the soul, that can cope with a visible enemy but not with a constant sense of dread and chaos, the source of which is invisible.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“It is not a myth.” “If not, why so easy to humiliate it?” “God is humble. He is love. He is patient. He grants us time to hear him. He waits for us to say yes to grace.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“Eventually all articulate words subsided into a current of communication flowing like a river of love between Lord and servant, between Creator and creature, between Friend and friend, Lover and lover.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“But they had failed to consider the fact that his solitude was not total—for there was prayer, and grace, and angels.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“He remembered that mankind was only one species, but every angel was a unique species.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The Lord has already conquered. These are only the final convulsions.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“He would ask, above all, that his tormenters be forgiven, and more—that the executioner would come to the narrow gate that leads into the Kingdom of God.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“If it came slowly, with torment, he would try to thank God for that too, begging that the greater sacrifice would merit an increase of grace to countless souls unknown to him.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“If time was a dimension wholly within the boundaries of material creation, and if God was beyond time, then he could, if he so wished, accept the prayer of a man who lived at the end of the second millennium and apply it to the needs of those who had gone before. Were not the death and Resurrection of Christ still active and effective, not simply as a linear chain of cause and effect, but as a living thing whose generative power is undiminished? The Mass itself was a mysterious suspension of time, a reaching through impossible barriers into the eternal Present, a moment of union with the Sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary. History, therefore, was a limited dimension, a compression of an unspeakably vast and beautiful dance into a solid icon, an incarnate Logos, a terrarium of fertile gardens in the cup of a Hand. The metaphors mixed and agitated in his mind, each reflecting a facet of the light of understanding, none of them complete, none of them a summation of the entire problem.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“More like a woman seeing things from the inside out, and a man trying to see from the outside in. It’s not a bad combination, you know.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The sensation of motion speaks to the soul. We are no longer bound by the limitations of our flesh. We fly on the wind and the water, toward a destination that promises sanctuary. A living metaphor. A glimmer of transcendence.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The man standing solid behind him, the liquid heaving of the sea, and the waves of hot light that now broke through the last of the overcast and beat upon his back conspired a silence within him that was different from any absence of sound he had ever known. It was no longer the muteness of introversion. It was worship.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“Arrow gave that some serious consideration. “When you name somebody,” said Colin, “he’s yours forever. You can’t ever forget him.” “Can you give him away?” “You can give him away, or he can run away, but he always carries your name inside him. And he leaves his name inside you.” “Even if he gets lost?” “Especially if he gets lost.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“But he will learn some day that Christianity is not a code of ethics for improving the behavior of humanity. Our faith is much more than that. It is light breaking into darkness. It is salvation. It is fire.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“That love is possible only if there is a free gift of the self.” She thought about that.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The snail had told her its secret: far better to see a few things closely and well than to consume a whole universe and not see it, not love it.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“When was it he had stopped enjoying the mere doing of things and got into the habit of just trying to get them done?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“The foundation of democracy is conscience—personal responsibility. The society that abandons moral absolutes must eventually degenerate into a police state. Well, this nation has abandoned morality. Is it realistic to think we can avoid the consequences?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel

“Sure I care about it, just not enough to play cards with my integrity as a poker chip.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun

“What remains of your church is going to be handed over to the elder brother, to its rightful Lord.” “God will not permit it.” “Your absent god has already permitted it. Your progressives gave it over to the Christ of this age long ago. There are so many of them. How easy it was to convince them.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Eclipse of the Sun: A Novel