Food for the Soul Quotes

“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle A)

“And this God-with-us, this God who is love, once said to us, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40). That’s the secret of sainthood: believing that saying of Jesus and seeing him hidden in everyone. St. Paul, in our reading from his letter to the Romans today, says that is what we are called to be. We are all called to be saints, every one of us. That is why we are here in this world. Each of us has a task to do that no one else can do, a life to live that no one else can live, a unique way of living out the love we have received from God by giving ourselves to others as God gave himself to us. The One we receive in the Eucharist, we are meant to pass on to others, in thousands of different ways. Some of them are words, some are deeds. St. Francis of Assisi supposedly said, “Preach the Gospel; use words when necessary.” This will cost you something. For the surest proof of love is always sacrifice. And if you give your heart, it will certainly be broken, many times. In fact, being a Christian will cost you everything. At the very least, it will cost you the right to be your own God, your own law, to invent your own morality, to say to God, “Not your will, but mine, be done.” That’s Satan’s backward inversion of the Lord’s Prayer. “Not your will, but mine, be done”—that’s what we say to God every time we sin. You won’t want to say that anymore once you know Jesus. Oh, you will say it, many times, every time you sin, but you will sincerely repent of it, you won’t want to say it, if you know Jesus. The secret to being a saint is simply knowing Jesus Christ. Not just knowing about him but knowing him.”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle A)

“That divine presence explains the joy the Jews felt so passionately when they went to their temple and which we find expressed in their Psalms. If we don’t have as much joy in our churches as they had, it can only be because we don’t have as much faith and love toward that divine presence as they had. And yet we have the presence of the same God in an even more complete and more concrete form in Christ, who is God incarnate, fully divine and fully human.”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle A)

“The cathedrals were not financed by taxes, on the poor or on the rich. They were financed by gifts, from rich and poor alike. They were not built at the expense of the poor; they were built by the poor, by the peasants who worked on them, and by their gifts. And the cathedrals were also built for the poor, who usually love them more than the rich do. (The rich build banks; the poor build cathedrals. We build what we love.)”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle A)