“Many people after discovering the faith soon realize that it is sometimes difficult to discern God’s will in a given situation. Most people think that knowing God’s will is impossible. After all, He gave us our natural capacity to reason and He has revealed Himself to us – so the rest is up to us. There is some truth to this, especially at the beginning of the spiritual life. But anyone who tries to make progress in our pilgrimage of faith this way is soon discouraged.
Following Christ often requires us to act in ways far beyond what common sense would dictate. This is why St. Paul urges, “calling to mind the mercy of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age, but live a transformed life by the renewal of your minds – so that you may discern what is God’s will — what is good, pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2).
As long as we try to live like everybody else, as long as we think like everyone else, our ability to know God’s will is severely impeded. The mercy of God revealed by Christ crucified gives us a different standard. The pathway to knowing the will of God is found in loving imitation of the Lord who laid down His life for His friends. God’s will is found in the Cross.
We can find the Cross, first of all through, loving sacrifice no matter how small or insignificant or hidden from the world. In fact, the more hidden the better. In the old days, this was called “offering it up.” Whatever is the least desired, least comfortable, least understood – God’s will is hidden there waiting to be discovered. Whenever we renounce anything out of love and devotion to the Lord, whenever we bear a trial for His glory, whenever we offer up our internal pain and continue out of faithfulness to Him – this action opens up space in our hearts and minds, space for God’s will to flow into our will. Paradoxically, this never overthrows our freedom but expands it, liberating us from selfishness and anything else that prevents us from loving to the full.
The Cross of Christ is also found whenever we are moved to do something beautiful for God. It was in her effort to do something beautiful for God that Blessed Teresa of Calcutta heard the call her to be His light. She discovered in her efforts to do something beautiful for God new facets of His Holy Will that would have otherwise remained hidden. St. John of the Cross lived by this same wisdom and marveled at the immense horizon of love and freedom God’s will contains. He came to counsel those who were seeking the Will of God, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”
-by Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, (1918 – 2008), Dulles was raised a Presbyterian but had become an agnostic by the time he was a student at Harvard. Subsequent to his conversion to Catholicism, he held the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham University. This essay is adapted from the Laurence J. McGinley Lecture delivered on November 7, 2007.
“Nothing is more striking in the New Testament than the confidence with which it proclaims the saving power of belief in Christ. Almost every page confronts us with a decision of eternal consequence: Will we follow Christ or the rulers of this world? The gospel is, according to Paul, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” (Rom. 1:16). The apostles and their associates are convinced that in Jesus they have encountered the Lord of Life and that He has brought them into the way that leads to everlasting blessedness. By personal faith in Him and by baptism in His name, Christians have passed from darkness to light, from error to truth, and from sin to holiness.
Paul is the outstanding herald of salvation through faith. To the Romans he writes, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). Faith, for him, is inseparable from baptism, the sacrament of faith. By baptism, the Christian is immersed in the death of Christ so as to be raised with Him to newness of life (Rom. 6:3-4).
The Book of Acts shows the apostles preaching faith in Christ as the way to salvation. Those who believe the testimony of Peter on the first Pentecost ask him what they must do to be saved. He replies that they must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and thereby save themselves from the present crooked generation (Acts 2:37-40). When Peter and John are asked by the Jewish religious authorities by what authority they are preaching and performing miracles, they reply that they are acting in the name of Jesus Christ and that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Paul and his associates bring the gospel first of all to the Jews because it is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. When the Jews in large numbers reject the message, Paul and Barnabas announce that they are turning to the Gentiles in order to bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 13:46-47).
A few chapters later in Acts, we see Paul and Silas in prison at Philippi. When their jailer asks them, “What must I do to be saved?” they reply, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” The jailer and his family at once accept baptism and rejoice in their newfound faith (Acts 16:30-34).
The same doctrine of salvation permeates the other books of the New Testament. Mark’s gospel ends with this missionary charge: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15-16).
John in his gospel speaks no less clearly. Jesus at one point declares that those who hear His word and believe in Him do not remain in darkness, whereas those who reject Him will be judged on the last day (John 12:44-50). At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the Twelve, “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3). John concludes the body of his gospel with the statement that he has written his account “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
From these and many other texts, I draw the conclusion that, according to the primary Christian documents, salvation comes through personal faith in Jesus Christ, followed and signified by sacramental baptism.
The New Testament is almost silent about the eternal fate of those to whom the gospel has not been preached. It seems apparent that those who became believers did not think they had been on the road to salvation before they heard the gospel. In his sermon at Athens, Paul says that in times past God overlooked the ignorance of the pagans, but he does not say that these pagans were saved. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul says that the Gentiles have come to a knowledge of God by reasoning from the created world, but that they are guilty because by their wickedness they have suppressed the truth and fallen into idolatry. In the second chapter of Romans, Paul indicates that Gentiles who are obedient to the biddings of conscience can be excused for their unbelief, but he indicates that they fall into many sins. He concludes that “all have sinned and fall short” of true righteousness (Rom. 3:23). For justification, Paul asserts, both Jews and Gentiles must rely on faith in Jesus Christ, Who expiated the sins of the world on the cross.
Animated by vibrant faith in Christ the Savior, the Christian Church was able to conquer the Roman Empire. The converts were convinced that in embracing Christianity they were escaping from the darkness of sin and superstition and entering into the realm of salvation. For them, Christianity was the true religion, the faith that saves. It would not have occurred to them that any other faith could save them.
Christian theologians, however, soon had to face the question whether anyone could be saved without Christian faith. They did not give a wholly negative answer. They agreed that the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, because they looked forward in faith and hope to the Savior, could be saved by adhering in advance to Him Who was to come.
The apologists of the second and third centuries made similar concessions with regard to certain Greek philosophers. The prologue to John’s gospel taught that the eternal Word enlightens all men who come into the world. Justin Martyr speculated that philosophers such as Socrates and Heraclitus had lived according to the Word of God, the Logos Who was to become incarnate in Christ, and they could therefore be reckoned as being in some way Christians. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen held that the Wisdom of God gave graces to people of every generation, both Greeks and barbarians.
The saving grace of which these theologians were speaking, however, was given only to pagans who lived before the time of Christ. It was given by the Word of God Who was to become incarnate in Jesus Christ. There was no doctrine that pagans could be saved since the promulgation of the gospel without embracing the Christian faith.
In the West, following Ambrose and others, Augustine taught that, because faith comes by hearing, those who had never heard the gospel would be denied salvation. They would be eternally punished for original sin as well as for any personal sins they had committed. Augustine’s disciple Fulgentius of Ruspe exhorted his readers to “firmly hold and by no means doubt that not only all pagans, but also all Jews, and all heretics and schismatics who are outside the Catholic Church, will go to the eternal fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels.”
The views of Augustine and Fulgentius remained dominant in the Christian West throughout the Middle Ages. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) reaffirmed the formula “Outside the Church, no salvation,” as did Pope Boniface VIII in 1302. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Council of Florence (1442) repeated the formulation of Fulgentius to the effect that no pagan, Jew, schismatic, or heretic could be saved.
On one point the medieval theologians diverged from rigid Augustinianism. On the basis of certain passages in the New Testament, they held that God seriously wills that all may be saved. They could cite the statement of Peter before the household of Cornelius: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). The First Letter to Timothy, moreover, declares that God “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). These assurances made for a certain tension in Catholic teaching on salvation. If faith in Christ was necessary for salvation, how could salvation be within reach of those who had no opportunity to learn about Christ?
Thomas Aquinas, in dealing with this problem, took his departure from the axiom that there was no salvation outside the Church. To be inside the Church, he held, it was not enough to have faith in the existence of God and in divine providence, which would have sufficed before the coming of Christ. God now required explicit faith in the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. In two of his early works ( De Veritate and Commentary on Romans ), he discusses the hypothetical case of a man brought up in the wilderness, where the gospel was totally unknown. If this man lived an upright life with the help of the graces given him, Thomas reasoned, God would make it possible for him to become a Christian believer, either through an inner illumination or by sending a missionary to him. Thomas referred to the biblical example of the centurion Cornelius, who received the visitation of an angel before being evangelized and baptized by Peter (Acts 10). In his Summa Theologiae , however, Thomas omits any reference to miraculous instruction; he goes back to the Augustinian theory that those who had never heard the gospel would be eternally punished for original sin as well as their personal sins.
A major theological development occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The voyages of discovery had by this time disclosed that there were large populations in North and South America, Africa, and Asia who had lived since the time of Christ and had never had access to the preaching of the gospel. The missionaries found no sign that even the most upright among these peoples had learned the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation by interior inspirations or angelic visitations.
Luther, Calvin, and the Jansenists professed the strict Augustinian doctrine that God did not will to save everyone, but the majority of Catholic theologians rejected the idea that God had consigned all these unevangelized persons to hell without giving them any possibility of salvation. A series of theologians proposed more hopeful theories that they took to be compatible with Scripture and Catholic tradition.
The Dominican Melchior Cano argued that these populations were in a situation no different from that of the pre-Christian pagans praised by Justin and others. They could be justified in this life (but not saved in the life to come) by implicit faith in the Christian mysteries. Another Dominican, Domingo de Soto, went further, holding that, for the unevangelized, implicit faith in Christ would be sufficient for salvation itself. Their contemporary, Albert Pighius, held that for these unevangelized persons the only faith required would be that mentioned in Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.” They could therefore be saved by general revelation and grace even though no missionary came to evangelize them.
The Jesuit Francisco Suarez, following these pioneers, argued for the sufficiency of implicit faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation, together with an implicit desire for baptism on the part of the unevangelized. Juan de Lugo agreed, but he added that such persons could not be saved if they had committed serious sins, unless they obtained forgiveness by an act of perfect contrition.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Jesuits of the Gregorian University followed in the tradition of Suarez and de Lugo, with certain modifications. Pope Pius IX incorporated some of their ideas in two important statements in 1854 and 1863. In the first, he said that, while no one can be saved outside the Church, God would not punish people for their ignorance of the true faith if their ignorance was invincible. In the second statement, Pius went further. He declared that persons invincibly ignorant of the Christian religion who observed the natural law and were ready to obey God would be able to attain eternal life, thanks to the workings of divine grace within them. In the same letter, the pope reaffirmed that no one could be saved outside the Catholic Church. He did not explain in what sense such persons were, or would come to be, in the Church. He could have meant that they would receive the further grace needed to join the Church, but nothing in his language suggests this. More probably he thought that such persons would be joined to the Church by implicit desire, as some theologians were teaching by his time.
In 1943, Pius XII did take this further step. In his encyclical on the Mystical Body, Mystici Corporis, he distinguished between two ways of belonging to the Church: in actual fact ( in re ) or by desire ( in voto ). Those who belonged in voto , however, were not really members. They were ordered to the Church by the dynamism of grace itself, which related them to the Church in such a way that they were in some sense in it. The two kinds of relationship, however, were not equally conducive to salvation.Those adhering to the Church by desire could not have a sure hope of salvation because they lacked many spiritual gifts and helps available only to those visibly incorporated in the true Church.
Mystici Corporis represents a forward step in its doctrine of adherence to the Church through implicit desire. From an ecumenical point of view, that encyclical is deficient, since it does not distinguish between the status of non-Christians and non-Catholic Christians. The next important document came from the Holy Office in its letter to Cardinal Cushing of Boston in 1949. The letter pointed out ”in opposition to Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., and his associates at St. Benedict Center” that, although the Catholic Church was a necessary means for salvation, one could belong to it not only by actual membership but by also desire, even an unconscious desire. If that desire was accompanied by faith and perfect charity, it could lead to eternal salvation.
Neither the encyclical Mystici Corporis nor the letter of the Holy Office specified the nature of the faith required for “in voto” status. Did the authors mean that the virtue of faith or the inclination to believe would suffice, or did they require actual faith in God and divine providence, or actual faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation?
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and its Decree on Ecumenism, made some significant departures from the teaching of Pius XII. It avoided the term member and said nothing of an unconscious desire for incorporation in the Church. It taught that the Catholic Church was the all-embracing organ of salvation and was equipped with the fullness of means of salvation. Other Christian churches and communities possessed certain elements of sanctification and truth that were, however, derived from the one Church of Christ that subsists in the Catholic Church today. For this reason, God could use them as instruments of salvation. God had, however, made the Catholic Church necessary for salvation, and all who were aware of this had a serious obligation to enter the Church in order to be saved. God uses the Catholic Church not only for the redemption of her own members but also as an instrument for the redemption of all. Her witness and prayers, together with the eucharistic sacrifice, have an efficacy that goes out to the whole world.
In several important texts, Vatican II took up the question of the salvation of non-Christians. Although they were related to the Church in various ways, they were not incorporated in her. God’s universal salvific will, it taught, means that he gives non-Christians, including even atheists, sufficient help to be saved. Whoever sincerely seeks God and, with His grace, follows the dictates of conscience is on the path to salvation. The Holy Spirit, in a manner known only to God, makes it possible for each and every person to be associated with the Paschal mystery. “God, in ways known to Himself, can lead those inculpably ignorant of the gospel to that faith without which it is impossible to please Him.” The council did not indicate whether it is necessary for salvation to come to explicit Christian faith before death, but the texts give the impression that implicit faith may suffice.
Vatican II left open the question whether non-Christian religions contain revelation and are means that can lead their adherents to salvation. It did say, however, that other religions contain elements of truth and goodness, that they reflect rays of the truth that enlightens all men, and that they can serve as preparations for the gospel. Christian missionary activity serves to heal, ennoble, and perfect the seeds of truth and goodness that God has sown among non-Christian peoples, to the glory of God and the spiritual benefit of those evangelized.
While repeatedly insisting that Christ is the one mediator of salvation, Vatican II shows forth a generally hopeful view of the prospects of non-Christians for salvation. Its hopefulness, however, is not unqualified: “Rather often, men, deceived by the evil one, have become caught up in futile reasoning and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Or, some there are who, living and dying in a world without God, are subject to utter hopelessness.” The missionary activity of the Church is urgent for bringing such persons to salvation.
After the council, Paul VI (in his pastoral exhortation “Evangelization in the Modern World”) and John Paul II (in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio ) interpreted the teaching of Vatican II in relation to certain problems and theological trends arising since the council. Both popes were on guard against political and liberation theology, which would seem to equate salvation with formation of a just society on earth and against certain styles of religious pluralism, which would attribute independent salvific value to non-Christian religions. In 2000, toward the end of John Paul’s pontificate, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Dominus Iesus , which emphatically taught that all grace and salvation must come through Jesus Christ, the one mediator.
Wisely, in my opinion, the popes and councils have avoided talk about implicit faith, a term that is vague and ambiguous. They do speak of persons who are sincerely seeking for the truth and of others who have found it in Christ. They make it clear that sufficient grace is offered to all and that God will not turn away those who do everything within their power to find God and live according to His law. We may count on Him to lead such persons to the faith needed for salvation.
One of the most interesting developments in post-conciliar theology has been Karl Rahner’s idea of “anonymous Christians.” He taught that God offers his grace to everyone and reveals Himself in the interior offer of grace. Grace, moreover, is always mediated through Christ and tends to bring its recipients into union with Him. Those who accept and live by the grace offered to them, even though they have never heard of Christ and the gospel, may be called anonymous Christians.
Although Rahner denied that his theory undermined the importance of missionary activity, it was widely understood as depriving missions of their salvific importance. Some readers of his works understood him as teaching that the unevangelized could possess the whole of Christianity except the name. Saving faith, thus understood, would be a subjective attitude without any specifiable content. In that case, the message of the gospel would have little to do with salvation.
The history of the doctrine of salvation through faith has gone through a number of stages since the High Middle Ages. Using the New Testament as their basic text, the Church Fathers regarded faith in Christ and baptism as essential for salvation. On the basis of his study of the New Testament and Augustine, Thomas Aquinas held that explicit belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation was necessary for everyone who lived since the time of Christ, but he granted that in earlier times it was sufficient to believe explicitly in the existence and providence of God.
In the sixteenth century, theologians speculated that the unevangelized were in the same condition as pre-Christians and were not held to believe explicitly in Christ until the gospel was credibly preached to them. Pius IX and the Second Vatican Council taught that all who followed their conscience, with the help of the grace given to them, would be led to that faith that was necessary for them to be saved. During and after the council, Karl Rahner maintained that saving faith could be had without any definite belief in Christ or even in God.
We seem to have come full circle from the teaching of Paul and the New Testament that belief in the message of Christ is the source of salvation. Reflecting on this development, one can see certain gains and certain losses. The New Testament and the theology of the first millennium give little hope for the salvation of those who, since the time of Christ, have had no chance of hearing the gospel. If God has a serious salvific will for all, this lacuna needed to be filled, as it has been by theological speculation and church teaching since the sixteenth century. Modern theology, preoccupied with the salvation of non-Christians, has tended to neglect the importance of explicit belief in Christ, so strongly emphasized in the first centuries. It should not be impossible, however, to reconcile the two perspectives.
Scripture itself assures us that God has never left Himself without a witness to any nation (Acts 14:17). His testimonies are marks of His saving dispensations toward all. The inner testimony of every human conscience bears witness to God as lawgiver, judge, and vindicator. In ancient times, the Jewish Scriptures drew on literature that came from Babylon, Egypt, and Greece. The Book of Wisdom and Paul’s Letter to the Romans speak of God manifesting his power and divinity through his works in nature. The religions generally promote prayer and sacrifice as ways of winning God’s favor. The traditions of all peoples contain elements of truth imbedded in their cultures, myths, and religious practices. These sound elements derive from God, who speaks to all his children through inward testimony and outward signs.
The universal evidences of the divine, under the leading of grace, can give rise to a rudimentary faith that leans forward in hope and expectation to further manifestations of God’s merciful love and of his guidance for our lives. By welcoming the signs already given and placing their hope in God’s redeeming love, persons who have not heard the tidings of the gospel may nevertheless be on the road to salvation. If they are faithful to the grace given them, they may have good hope of receiving the truth and blessedness for which they yearn.
The search, however, is no substitute for finding. To be blessed in this life, one must find the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, which is worth buying at the cost of everything one possesses. To Christians has been revealed the mystery hidden from past ages, which the patriarchs and prophets longed to know. By entering through baptism into the mystery of the cross and the Resurrection, Christians undergo a radical transformation that sets them unequivocally on the road to salvation. Only after conversion to explicit faith can one join the community that is nourished by the Word of God and the sacraments. These gifts of God, prayerfully received, enable the faithful to grow into ever greater union with Christ.
In Christ’s Church, therefore, we have many aids to salvation and sanctification that are not available elsewhere. Cardinal Newman expressed the situation admirably in one of his early sermons:
“The prerogative of Christians consists in the possession, not of exclusive knowledge and spiritual aid, but of gifts high and peculiar; and though the manifestation of the Divine character in the Incarnation is a singular and inestimable benefit, yet its absence is supplied in a degree, not only in the inspired record of Moses, but even, with more or less strength, in those various traditions concerning Divine Providences and Dispositions which are scattered through the heathen mythologies.
We cannot take it for granted that everyone is seeking the truth and is prepared to submit to it when found. Some, perhaps many, resist the grace of God and reject the signs given to them. They are not on the road to salvation at all. In such cases, the fault is not God’s but theirs. The references to future punishment in the gospels cannot be written off as empty threats. As Paul says, God is not mocked (Gal. 6:7).”
We may conclude with certitude that God makes it possible for the unevangelized to attain the goal of their searching. How that happens is known to God alone, as Vatican II twice declares. We know only that their search is not in vain. “Seek, and you will find,” says the Lord (Matt. 7:7). If non-Christians are praying to an unknown God, it may be for us to help them find the one they worship in ignorance. God wants everyone to come to the truth. Perhaps some will reach the goal of their searching only at the moment of death. Who knows what transpires secretly in their consciousness at that solemn moment? We have no evidence that death is a moment of revelation, but it could be, especially for those in pursuit of the truth of God.
Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of believers to help these seekers by word and by example. Whoever receives the gift of revealed truth has the obligation to share it with others. Christian faith is normally transmitted by testimony. Believers are called to be God’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Who, then, can be saved? Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments. Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think He wills to be found. Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God’s promise has been fulfilled. Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will. Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice. God’s saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted. But that same grace brings obligations to all who receive it. They must not receive the grace of God in vain. Much will be demanded of those to whom much is given.”
(CCC 846) “How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; He is present to us in His body which is the Church.
He Himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door.
Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”
I have been given an incalculable amount. I submit myself, wholly, or at least I try to to the Author of ALL that gift, in most profound gratitude possible. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man. cf Lk 18:13.
-by Br Alan Piper, OP, prior to entering the Order, Br Alan earned his PhL from the Catholic University of America
“The Christian faith is about God—not only because God is its subject-matter, but also because God is its source. God had something to say to us, something He thought it would be good for us to know, and something which, if He had not told us, we would not otherwise have known. The Christian faith, therefore, is a kind of knowledge, because it arises from a revelation, and the reception of this specific revelation establishes human beings in a new relationship to God.
To say this much is already to distinguish Christian faith from two common misconceptions. The first is the familiar idea that faith is contrary to reason. Proponents of this view often deny the existence not only of revelations from God but of God himself. To which St. Paul classically responds, “Ever since the creation of the world God’s invisible nature . . . has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). In themselves, the existence and nature of God are not really matters of faith. God can be known, and indeed should be known, simply from the order, even the mere existence, of the universe. In the end, the rationalistic atheist ends up holding the rather dubious proposition that everything has a cause except everything.
And if God is generous enough to create the universe, to keep it in existence, and to give life to spiritual creations such as human beings, is it really so incredible that He, like a good parent, has not abandoned us but sought to teach us and to bring us into intimate union with himself?
And is it really very surprising that this education in divine things should involve an element of darkness? Such intimate knowledge of the infinite Creator is beyond the capacity of human reason alone. So when God speaks to us in Christ He illumines our minds by a special grace called the virtue of faith. By this gift—despite the remaining darkness—the mind is brought into contact with God and begins to share in God’s own knowledge of Himself. (How’s that for anti-rational?) Whoever believes in Christ is like someone who has emerged from a subterranean cavern and now waits for his eyes to adjust to the light of the sun.
There is another kind of faith—optimistic but inadequate—which offers a kind of vague assurance that, whatever one’s relation to revealed religion, everything is going to be fine in the end. When someone uses this notion to excuse himself from taking seriously claims of divine revelation, the situation is like that of the man caught in the flashflood: having declined to be rescued by car, boat, and helicopter, he places all of his confidence in a direct intervention by God. Swept away by the waters, the man meets his Maker asking why nothing was done to save him, only to be told that God had sent a car, a boat, and a helicopter. The Christian claim is that God has already sent us the means of salvation: the doctrine of Christ, the sacraments, the Church. These means make it possible for us to be happy with God now and for eternity. By contrast, it is uncertain whether a hazy optimism will be much help when the waters come.
Such are the conceptual counterfeits the virtue of faith is cast among, and it is important to be able to distinguish the genuine article, not only because faith is our gateway to the Christian mysteries but also because faith itself is one of these mysteries. Receiving the gift of faith, we begin to be taken up into the re-creation of the world.
After all, the life of faith is not an unthinking acquiescence; as St. Augustine put it, to believe in Christ is “to think with assent.”
“Summer is the tourist’s season. Imagine taking a tour of the White House. There is that surreal feeling of walking through the corridors of such an important building, where so much has happened. And then, at the climax of the tour, you enter the Oval Office. There, the tour guide comments on the history of the room and its current appearance. Visitors ooh and ah, snapping photos and selfies.
However, sitting there in the Oval Office, behind the desk, is the President. For some strange reason, the tour guide does not mention him, and following suit, most visitors hardly even notice him. Perhaps a few devoutly patriotic visitors offer a polite “good afternoon, Mr. President.” But besides such niceties, there is no fuss about the President. People are more enthralled by the room than the man.
A similar scenario plays out in many Catholic churches. Most tours focus on architecture and artwork. “Look at these gothic arches.” “What beautiful stained glass!” All the while, the King of the Universe, the unmatched Lover of every heart is present—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—awaiting each guest in the Eucharist. Sure, the pious visitors will genuflect or bow, but even these gestures are often perfunctory.
Art has an inherent value, worthy of receiving the tour’s appreciation. And it is a blessing to have a church worthy of such a tour. Even more, the beauty of the church helps to manifest the beauty of the Eucharist. Good artwork tells the story of God’s love for us, and good architecture calls forth the reverence due to the Eucharist.
Yet the irony remains. For a brief period of time, we get more excited about the wrapping paper than the gift.
Our response should be quite simple: “You are my God; I thirst for You.”
“St Thomas Aquinas says in a neat way that there are three things necessary for our salvation: to know what to believe, to know what to desire and to know what to do.
Of course he is not the first one to stress the importance of knowledge, whether practical or theoretical. The value of knowledge has been key to many philosophical or religious movements. It is expressed in the familiar “Know thyself” of the Delphic oracle or in the saying of Laozi: “To know others is wise; to know oneself is enlightenment.”
What knowledge or understanding does Christianity offer us?
Our Lord, by His being truly human and Divine, teaches us what it means to be truly human. By His words and actions He also reveals to us something of the mystery of God.
In Jn 6:26 Jesus attempts to educate our desires, our motivations, as well as instructs us in what we ought to believe about Himself.
The crowds that followed Christ to the other side of the lake did so because He gave them food:
‘I tell you most solemnly,
you are not looking for Me because you have seen the signs
but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.’
These words of Christ provoke us to ask some questions about our discipleship:
Why is it that we follow Him?What do we believe about Him and does that what we believe fully inform our daily lives? Feel free to meditate this week on these questions in prayer before the Lord with all honesty.
What you might discover, however, is that there are many reasons why you follow Christ.
Our motivations can be multiple because we find ourselves attracted to the goodness of God for different reasons. Some of us look for peace and consolation of the faith. Others try to make the world a more just and a better place. Some still find in the faith an insightful structure enabling them to manage their family life or the education of their children. All these motivations are good in themselves; they are right and proper, just as working to provide food for oneself and one’s family is right and proper. But there is one motivation, one desire, that needs to crown all these in order for us fully to embrace the discipleship of Christ. That fundamental desire is for God Himself, the living bread. (A sacristan saw Thomas Aquinas late one night kneeling before the altar and heard a voice, coming, it seemed, from the crucifix, which said, “Thou hast written well of Me, Thomas; what reward wouldst thou have?” To which Thomas replied, “Nothing but Thyself, Lord.”) Good answer. Right answer. Best. 🙂
If we truly embrace the knowledge that Christ is our Head in his Body which is the Church, then we need to teach ourselves to long to be ever closer to Him. In the way we think or act, in the way we speak and look at each other, we are called to be Christ-like. This is the new life that St Paul talks about:
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.” Col 3:5-6
“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Eph 4:17-24
The life that the Apostle speaks about flows from the revelation of Christ: He is sent, given to us, so that we may flourish as one body. He lives in us – this is what we ought to believe; He is coming back in glory – this is what we ought to desire; He left us His Good News and His own Body and Blood to be shared around the world – this is what we ought to do.”
We shouldn’t judge the Nazoreans too harshly. If God appeared to us in disguise, would we see Him? Even the disguise of bread and wine? Would we? Really? You’re that sure of yourself? I’m not.
“Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and His hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.”-Bl Teresa of Calcutta, MC
“A priest, in his homily recently, reminded his congregation that we are all called to be prophets and evangelize to those around us and that we are not to be surprised when those around us reject us. As I listened to the priest, however, I found that I often identify not with Christ, but with the incredulous people of Nazareth. I began to wonder how often I had rejected a message from God or shut myself off from His miracles, because I was too snobbish to believe that God could work through the people around me.
The people of Nazareth were incredibly blessed among the towns of history, for they had the sole privilege of witnessing God grow up. In their simple town, the Blessed Mother and her spouse, the ever-steadfast St. Joseph, raised the Son of God. Nazareth sheltered the family from whom the Savior of the world came, and yet, they did not recognize Him. They saw only what they wanted to see: a local boy, someone “just like us”; they missed their opportunity for Christ to do what could have been His greatest miracles. They refused to believe that God could be fulfilling His promise of salvation through, in their minds, an ordinary man.
There are dozens of reasons they could have felt that way. Perhaps they did not like Christ’s message of repentance. They could have thought themselves too humble to be noticed by God, or, conversely, too proud to need help from a neighbor. It must have been hard to wrap their heads around the fact that the Messiah had been under their noses the whole time. Whether they had imagined a charismatic stranger, a solider, or a wealthy king, I doubt they saw the Anointed One as a young man with whom they had shared a village, a synagogue, and maybe a family tree.
Yet no matter the reason, be it prejudice or pride, self-abasement or self-righteousness, the people of Nazareth heard the truth and were unable to believe it. They witnessed the Son of God in their midst and saw only the son of a local carpenter. Their clouded vision cost them the chance for great miracles, miracles Jesus clearly wanted to perform. They had the opportunity to fall down at the feet of Christ, and claim, along with their unworthiness, their gratitude for what God was working in front of their very eyes. Instead, they watched the chosen one of Israel walk away and shake His head at their unbelief.
How many times have I unknowingly caused the Savior of the world to shake His head at my own doubt? I can be so blind to what the Holy Spirit is working in my life because I only see what I want to see. I must miss miracles all the time because I cannot believe I am worthy of them or that they could happen here. My ears are so often closed to the truth because of the person who has spoken it. We are so familiar with those around us that we can miss how God uses them as agents of change and messengers of repentance.
As the village of Nazareth demonstrated, the people of Israel had a habit of missing out on the prophecies of God and mistreating his prophets. God reached out to them again and again, but their hearts were hard, their ears were deaf, and their eyes were blind. And still we continue not to learn from their stories. The Holy Spirit still speaks to us: through the Church, through the Scriptures, and through the people around us. We must not let our ideas of what we want God to say and of what His messengers ought to look like cost us our ability to hear.
We walk in a landscape of prophets, angels, and miracles, if our eyes and ears will only be open. As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said: ““Earth’s crammed with heaven/And every common bush afire with God, /But only he who sees takes off his shoes; /The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” God has not stopped speaking and He has not stopped working miracles. Let us not stop listening and looking. If we allow those around us to scandalize us when they speak truth and when we see our town and our time and ourselves as unworthy of miracles, we miss more than a message, we miss Christ.”
“One thing all humans have in common is that we all want to be happy. In America, it is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right to pursue happiness along with the rights to life and liberty. It seems like all our energies go into pursuing happiness in these strange times. Everyone today seems to do what they do because it will make them happy, hardly anything could be more normal. It has always been this way. Can you imagine someone saying to themselves “I am going to do this because I know it will make me unhappy?” It is unlikely.
The pursuit of happiness is big business in America and it probably always has been. All of technology is geared towards making things that make us happy. All popular entertainment is directed at making us happy. Our schools, the mass media, politicians, psychologists and even our lawyers would like to help make us happy. We ourselves are encouraged nonstop to pursue happiness. What a great irony it is today to notice how unhappy everyone seems to be. The world can be a miserable place, especially considering the efforts we make to be happy. Have you ever wondered why so many people are so unhappy these days? We ought to try to figure out why. First, we must define the term happiness.
What is happiness?
There are at least three different ways to understand happiness. There is modern American happiness we associate with wealth and health. We can call this appetitive happiness because it is grounded in our sense appetites. Winning the lottery is most likely to make us happy. We are content to get the new iPhone, or a new car, or a good job etc. The difficulty with this definition of happiness is that it is really more like contentment and it is temporary. The things that make us happy by this definition fade quickly and we must be off to pursue the next thing that will kick-start our serotonin production. If we take a step back from this kind of happiness we begin to notice that nothing really ever satisfies us for very long and no matter how much we end up getting, it is never enough.
A second kind of happiness we can associate with what the Ancient Greeks called “eudaimonia.” This is a very good kind of happiness associated with the acquisition of virtue. Eudaimonia translates as a good and lasting spiritual state resulting from developing habits of excellence. This kind of happiness is particularly associated with the right use of the intellect and is grounded in the moral and intellectual virtues discovered and elucidated by the greatest minds of ancient philosophy. The primary virtues associated with eudaimonia are the cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance. The Greeks understood that to pursue and achieve excellence was the way to live the good life. Those who are able to achieve excellence in virtue are generally very happy, and the happiness is lasting and fulfilling.
The third kind of happiness is blessedness. Christians call it beatitude. It is associated with the rightly ordered will. While eudaimonia obtains happiness in this life, beatitude aims at eternal happiness. The one who teaches us about this kind of happiness is Jesus Christ, the one true teacher in the Sermon on the Mount found beginning in Matthew 5. Beatitude is achieved when a soul submits his will to the will of God and cooperates with grace to become perfected. A soul inspired by the beatific vision is one who seeks excellence not only in the cardinal virtues mentioned above, but seeks to be perfected by the acquisition and infusion of the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.
What is the problem today?
We might easily observe today that the world encourages us to pursue worldly happiness. We ourselves may pursue this kind of contentment and wonder why all of us seem never to be content for very long. Even if we are pursuing the wrong kind of happiness, and even if we know it, and even if we can’t seem to stop, there is a much deeper and more difficult problem that lies at the root of our restlessness today. This is in our misunderstanding of the nature of how things work. We are likely to invert the right order of things concerning being and doing.
C.S. Lewis described a principle of first and second things. First things are permanent and lasting, like the virtues and God. Second things are temporary like cars and iPhones. He explained that we ought to put first things first and second things second because if we put second things first and first things second we will lose both first and second things. He goes on to explain that if we put first things first we will get both first and second things. To use an agricultural metaphor, we might see agricultural labor, seeds and roots as permanent things while the fruit that is produced from the tress as the second things. You can see that if we seek the second things of the fruits, as we often do today, that we may get the fruit, but whether we eat it or let it rot, it will not last long. On the other hand, if we focus on agricultural labor to create the proper conditions for the trees, the trees will grow, produce fruit, and continue to produce fruit.
Our problem today is that we put second things first. Perhaps our most fundamental mistake is that we have inverted being and doing. Being is a first thing and doing is a second thing. We believe that what we do will determine who we become, but this is exactly upside down. It is who we are that determines what we will do. So instead of doing things that we think will make us who we want to become, we ought to cultivate the habits of being constituting the moral and intellectual virtues acquired by the saints. When we have become what God intends for us, then we will do good works. If we try the opposite, our attempts at good works cannot be fruitful, we will not become saints. It is when we become like the saints that we can produce good works.
So we might understand by analogy that what the tree is (being) produces (doing) its fruit. If a tree is an orange tree it will not produce an apple, and it had to be an orange tree first before it could even produce oranges, not the other way around. In Matthew 7:16, Christ said “you will know them by their fruits.” What we do comes forth from who we are. We are not what we do, what we do comes from what we are.
Which kind of happiness will you pursue?
When the world talks about happiness, it is not the same kind of happiness God intends for us. The world’s notions of happiness are about the acquisition of second things. The ancient Greeks and Jesus speak about the habits of being constituted by first things. Of course, the best kind of happiness is beatitude. It requires eudaimonia, the right use of the intellect, to serve in the acquisition of the truth in order to see rightly what is good and what is evil. It also requires that our contentment with second things be subordinated to the right use of reason that supports the rightly ordered will.
The grand irony in all this pursuit of happiness business is that those who seek primarily material happiness may end up getting what they want temporarily, but they always end in loss and despair.Those who seek beatitude also get what they seek, and it is a difficult endeavor, often beginning in loss and misery, but ending in glory. Job lost all the goods of second things and suffered greatly in the process, but because he maintained excellence in the virtues by his habits of being, he ended not only happy with his relationship with God, but contented by restoring the second things he had lost. It is a difficult thing to pursue virtue. It is not terribly difficult to pursue money. As we live out our inalienable right to pursue happiness, let us be wise in which kind of happiness we choose to pursue.”
-by Br Isaac Augustine Morales, OP, (Br. Isaac was born in the Chicago’s northern burbs, received a BSE in civil engineering from Duke University, an MTS with a concentration in biblical studies from the University of Notre Dame, and a PhD in New Testament from Duke University. Before joining the Order of Preachers, he worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Theology at Marquette University.)
“There is the sea, vast and wide, with its moving swarms past counting, living things great and small. The ships are moving there and the monsters You made to play with.” (Ps 104:25-26)
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
We may grow bored with the world and forget just how strange and marvelous it is, but God doesn’t. Indeed, the fact that God continually sustains creation in existence suggests that ennui is a symptom of our fallen nature, not something that affects the Almighty.
Scripture also attests to the particular delight God takes in his human creatures. In a famous passage from the Book of Proverbs that shares some similarities with Psalm 104, Lady Wisdom speaks of her role in the creation of the world:
When [God] set for the sea its limit, so that the waters should not transgress His command; then was I beside Him as His craftsman, and I was His delight day by day, playing before Him all the while, playing on the surface of His earth; and I found delight in the sons of men. (Prov 8:29-31)
That God shares this “delight in the sons of men” with Lady Wisdom is evident from the way He interacts with them in Scripture. Would a stodgy, humorless God have a laugh at the (apparent) expense of a barren elderly couple, later allowing them to join in on the fun?
Would a mirthless Creator choose a man with a temperament as solid as shifting sand as the foundation of his Church, giving him a name wholly unsuited to his character? Delight, it would seem, is a fundamental aspect of God’s relation to his creatures.
What are we to make, then, of this playfulness? Is it, like the other divine attributes, something that distinguishes God sharply from us? Do we have to negate the attribute of playfulness from God in order to maintain the profound distance between the divine nature and human nature?
To be sure, whenever we compare ourselves with God, we must be on our guard, lest we refashion Him in our own image and/or likeness. It simply won’t do to say that our delight in creation is identical to God’s.
At the same time, neither will it do to say either that we should suppress our instinct for playfulness, or that we ought to deny the delight God clearly takes in his creatures.
Paradoxically, it would seem that the more we ourselves take delight in creation, the more like God we become. Though this might seem counterintuitive at first, perhaps it shouldn’t really surprise us.
After all, the One who loved creation so much that He took on human flesh and teased Peter with his new nickname also once said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).”
“Everyone knows who Jesus is. He’s that great (God-)man Who taught His followers to love their enemies and warned them not to judge. He spoke truth to power, and He paid the price for it. He loved the outcast and dined with sinners. This is the Jesus we all know and love.
But this portrait, true as far as it goes, turns out to be rather flat. Most people agree that we should love one another. And everyone supports speaking truth to power. If Jesus taught only what everyone already knows, He really has nothing to say to us.
In fact, however, Jesus’ teaching on truth and love is far from common knowledge. It’s true, for example, that He instructs us to love our enemies, but he also says—admittedly, by way of hyperbole—that we should hate our parents out of love for Him (Lk 14:26). And His own love for the Pharisees did not prevent Him from describing them as the rankest filth (Mt 23).
He also called them “hypocrites” and “a brood of vipers”—even though He instructed His disciples not to judge (Mt 23; 7:1). Apparently (and obviously), Jesus did not mean to rule out all moral denunciation. In fact, when Jesus discourages the man with the beam in his eye from removing the speck in his neighbor’s, He advises him to remove the beam in his own eye in order better to remove the speck in his neighbor’s (Mt 7:3-5). So, according to Jesus, to pass judgment on another’s immorality is to do that person a favor!
Given all Jesus’ criticism of the religious authorities, people sometimes infer that Jesus was against hierarchy or any organized religion. But of course He Himself chose twelve men to succeed Him in teaching the world, and He gave them power to decide things concerning heaven and earth (Mt 28:19; 16:19; 18:18). In fact, what Jesus acknowledges as good in the Pharisees is precisely their official capacity. Despite the Pharisees’ egregious wickedness, Jesus tells the people to listen to them because they sit on the seat of Moses (Mt 23:2-3). That is about as ringing an endorsement of organized, hierarchical religion as one could find. Not that the Pharisees are necessarily better than everyone else. Jesus saves His highest praise for the humble: “whoever humbles himself like [a] child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:4). According to Jesus, humility and hierarchy go together. Even in heaven, human beings will be arrayed in order of greatness.
Nothing in Jesus’ teaching is self-contradictory (unlike Walt Whitman, Jesus did not consider self-contradiction an expression of wisdom). Instead, the teaching of Jesus is paradoxical, because life itself is paradoxical. Only a doctrine that is profound and perplexing is adequate to the mystery of human life. And only a teacher Who is surprising, strange, and strong can demand our full attention. If we content ourselves with anything less, we lose the real Jesus. We get a cardboard-cutout Jesus, who can be little more than a confirmation of our own prejudices.
And really, it is Jesus’s teaching about Himself that is at the heart of His message. Unlike the Buddha, for example, Jesus did not instruct His followers to ignore His person and focus on his teaching. In the center of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus asks His disciples the central question: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29). In John’s Gospel, He answers His own question: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). It is this paradox, the mystery of Jesus’ true humanity and true divinity, that is the source and explanation of all the other paradoxes of His doctrine. And all the other paradoxes lead back to this One. And it is this mystery of Jesus’ identity that makes His teaching infinitely worth hearing.
“Let him who has ears to hear . . .” (Mt 11:15).
Love,
Matthew
Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, “When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.” -St Jerome, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistencies and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” -St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Don't neglect your spiritual reading. Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom
