Agape
…when we choose to exercise an act of agape (unselfish love), we bring the real presence of Christ to the people we love. We become tubes into which Christ comes and through which Christ moves…
Category: Commonplace book
Our Hearts Are Restless…
God is the very life of your soul as the soul is the life of your body. That’s the point St. Thomas makes in quoting St. Augustine. (All of St. Thomas is really only an…
Never Cease…
My friend and passionate reader Natalie Long just finished The Prison Meditations of Fr Alfred Delp and shared with me the following passage from the book. Pass it on! It remains only for me to…
Today’s One-Liner (#343)
For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy. –Saint Thérèse of Lisieux,…
Without Judging
To underline: the moral crusader filled with righteous indignation proceeds obsessively, not calmly or with clarity; and his efforts are sterile, ineffective, undermined by his own lack of self-awareness. Only contemplative attention that reflects things…
Today’s One-Liner (#342)
Believe me–to write books of piety, to compose sublime poems, all this is not worth as much as the smallest act of renunciation. –Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, in Francis Broome, The Little Way for Every…
Four or Five Times in Life
“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It…
Today’s One-Liner (#341)
We must dare to be love in a world that does not know how to love. –Charles de Foucauld, cited in Isaac Slater, OCSO, “Do Not Judge Anyone”: Desert Wisdom for a Polarized World
Taking Stock
What have we accomplished? Good new poetry, that oughta be enough. –Jack Kerouac, in The Letters, by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan and David Stanford, 472
Today’s One-Liner (#337)
The Catholic who engages in philosophy is part of a tradition that stretches back through the centuries, and his task is to appropriate that patrimony and make it part of the contemporary conversation. –Ralph McInerny, I…