Quotes — Faith (82 entries)
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A Personal Equation Between the Cross and Us
There is a personal equation between that Cross and us. Life with its rebellions, its injustices, its sins, all played a role in the Cruxifixion. We can no more wash our hands of our guilt than Pilate could wash his as he held them up under a noonday sun and declared himself innocent.
It was not so much the Cruxifixion that hurt and wounded, it was not Annas, it was not Caiphas, it was not the exectioners, for “they knew not what they did”; it was not his enemies who caused his greatest sorrow: “If my enemies had done this, I could have borne it.” It was us who grieved him most, for we know what we do—we have tasted his sweetmeats; we have broken Bread with him; we are his familiars. That is our sorrow—that he who came to heal the broken hearts had his own Heart broken by us.
But mourning is not despair. If we have crucified Christ, there is pardon: “Father, forgive them”; if we have pierced Mary’s heart, there is pardon still: “Son, behold your mother”; if there are tears in our eyes, they shall be wiped away: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, The Cross and the Beatitudes: Lessons on Love and Forgiveness
« πλ | 9 Apr 2004 »
A blade of praise…
The seed, swollen with moisture, burst asunder its covering of soil and out peers the blade of wheat, full of symbols. So faith, whose bosom is filled with goodly fruits, is a blade of praise.
— St. Ephrem the Syrian
« πλ | 15 Aug 2006 »
A deep comforting sense…
It gives me a deep comforting sense that ‘things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.’
— Helen Keller
« πλ | 27 Jan 2005 »
A god who lets us prove his existence…
A god who lets us prove his existence would be an idol.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
« πλ | 24 Sep 2004 »
A matter of questioning and struggle…
We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.
— Thomas Merton
« πλ | 6 Nov 2004 »
A mountain of doubts…
A mountain of doubts does not equal one denial.
— Author unknown
« πλ | 15 May 2003 »
Acceptance has become…
Before we can change anything in our life, we have to recognize that this is the way it is meant to be right now. For me, acceptance has become what I call the long sigh of the soul. It’s the closed eyes in prayer, perhaps even the quiet tears. It’s “all right,” as in “All right, You lead, I’ll follow.” And it’s “all right” as in “Everything is going to turn out all right.” This is simply part of the journey…
— Sarah Ban Breathnach
« πλ | 6 Feb 2006 »
Adopted Sons of God
We are not begotten by God, we are only made by Him: in our natural state we are not sons of God, only (so to speak) statues. We have not got Zoe or spiritual life: only Bios or biological life which is presently going to run down and die. Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share a life which was begotten, not made, which has always existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came into this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call ‘good infection’. Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing more.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
« πλ | 4 Jan 2004 »
Baptism means derailment…
The word baptism means derailment. Christ baptizes Peter on the rock when he tells him: “Because you confessed your love for me, your life is no longer your own. Before you said this, you fastened your belt and you walked wherever you liked. Now, others will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.” To submit to love is to be baptized, that is, to let one’s life be forever interrupted. To not let one’s life be interrupted is to say no to love
— Ronald Rolheiser
« πλ | 14 Sep 2006 »
Be fishers of men…
Be fishers of men.
You catch ‘em.
He’ll clean ‘em.
— Seen on a church marque
« πλ | 3 Apr 2004 »
Bigger plan…
Maybe God has a bigger plan for me than I have for myself.
— Jamie, A Walk to Remember
« πλ | 15 Jul 2003 »
Christ became…
Christ became what we are so that He might make us what He is.
— Seen on a chruch marquee
« πλ | 5 Dec 2003 »
Discouragement is not…
Discouragement is not from God.
— St. Ignatius [via]
« πλ | 9 Jan 2004 »
Do you desire security?
Do you desire security? Here you have it. The Lord says to you, “I will never abandon you, I will always be with you.” If a good man made you such a promise, you would trust him. God makes it, and do you doubt? Do you seek a support more sure than the word of God, which is infallible? Surely, He has made the promise, He has written it, He has pledged His word for it, it is most certain.
— St. Augustine (thanks Alexa)
« πλ | 27 Mar 2005 »
Doubt is a pain…
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother
— Kahlil Gibran
« πλ | 12 Sep 2006 »
Doubts are the ants in the pants…
Doubts are the ants in the pants that keep faith moving.
- Frederick Beuchner
« πλ | 28 Jan 2006 »
Everything will be alright…
A definition of faith: everything will be alright by God’s standards, maybe not ours, but by His for sure.
— Mark Woodward
« πλ | 27 Sep 2005 »
Faith and hope bring us through…
Faith and hope bring us through time but leave us at the doorstep of eternity. Only love goes with us inside.
— Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
« πλ | 7 Mar 2006 »
Faith goes up the stairs…
Faith goes up the stairs that love builds and looks out windows which hope has opened.
— C.H. Spurgeon
« πλ | 10 Jan 2005 »
Faith is daring of the soul to…
Faith is daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.
— William Newton Clarke
« πλ | 28 Aug 2004 »
Faith is daring of the soul to…
Faith is daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.
— William Newton Clarke
« πλ | 21 Jul 2004 »
Faith is not like bottled water…
Faith is not like bottled water but like rain. Its destiny is not just to be kept and held but to make something visible grow.
— Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
« πλ | 10 Mar 2006 »
Faith is the strength by…
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
— Helen Keller (thanks Becca)
« πλ | 21 Oct 2005 »
Faith is to believe what…
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
— St. Augustine
« πλ | 1 Sep 2006 »
Fear imprisons, faith liberates…
Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick (thanks Libby)
« πλ | 27 Nov 2004 »
Fear is the furnace…
Fear is the furnace where faith is forged.
— George Ross [via]
« πλ | 8 Nov 2005 »
Fear of Abandonment…
The fear of abandonment triggers all other fears.
— Fr. Boyer
« πλ | 31 Aug 2003 »
For the sacrificed…
For the sacrificed, in the hour of sacrifice, only one thing counts: faith—alone among enemies and skeptics. Faith, in spite of the humiliation which is both the necessary precondition and the consequence of faith, faith without any hope of compensation other than he can find in a faith which reality seems so thoroughly to refute.
— Dag Hammarskjöld
« πλ | 26 Mar 2005 »
Four steps deeper than law…
Thus moral theology leads us four steps deeper than law. To fulfill the moral law, we need love. To get love, we need union with God. To get union with God, we need the new birth. And to get the new birth, we need faith.
— Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
« πλ | 25 Mar 2006 »
God did not call me to be…
God did not call me to be successful. God called me to be faithful.
— Mother Teresa
« πλ | 14 Aug 2005 »
God is like a mirror…
God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different.
— Rabbi Harold Kushner
« πλ | 31 Oct 2004 »
God is like…
God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.
— Meister Eckhart [via]
« πλ | 8 Dec 2004 »
God is shining through it all…
Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometime, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything—in people and in things and in nature and in events…we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is, we don’t see it.
— Thomas Merton [via]
« πλ | 13 Apr 2005 »
His will…
His will is my peace.
— Author unknown
« πλ | 26 Jun 2004 »
How can you see Christ in people?
“How can you see Christ in people?” And we only say: It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope, that we can awaken these same acts in their hearts, too, with the help of God…
— Dorothy Day, The Mystery of the Poor [via]
« πλ | 30 May 2006 »
I believe…
I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining,
in love when I’m alone,
and in God even when He is silent.
— Found scratched on a concentration camp wall
« πλ | 27 Jul 2004 »
I show you doubt…
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
— Robert Browning
« πλ | 21 Nov 2005 »
I understand that it brings…
Of course I don’t believe in it [pointing to horseshoe on his office wall]. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.
— Niels Bohr [via]
« πλ | 8 Feb 2006 »
If a unity of faith is not possible…
Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar
« πλ | 19 Apr 2005 »
If faith does not change a person…
If faith does not change a person on the inside, and ultimately does not change what he or she does on the outside, then that faith is stillborn. Only through and in God can we really, truly change for the better.
« πλ | 9 Oct 2004 »
In God’s Grace?
St. Joan of Arc replied to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges. Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: “If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.”
« πλ | 30 May 2004 »
In the darkest night…
In the darkest night to be certain of the dawn…to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God—this is the challenge and the way.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Passion for Truth
« πλ | 17 Sep 2005 »
Know Nothing of Calvary Love…
If I myself dominate myself, if my thoughts revolve round myself, if I am so occupied with myself I rarely have “a heart at leisure from itself,” then I know nothing of Calvary love.
— Amy Carmichael
« πλ | 17 Apr 2004 »
Life experiences show us…
Life experiences show us that humans are untrustworthy, and perverting the principle found in the first Letter of John, we say to ourselves, “If I cannot trust what I can see, how can I trust what I cannot see?” The irony is that it is precisely what we cannot see that is most trustworthy. We can be certain that under ordinary circumstances hydrogen will form one bond in which it tends to “lose” an electron. We can pretty much rely upon the Kreb’s cycle. When we move from the unseen to the seen, we begin to doubt.
— Steven Riddle, in “Losing Trust”
« πλ | 23 Apr 2005 »
Looking for God…
Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare’s plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters…
— C.S. Lewis
« πλ | 21 Feb 2005 »
Love is faith’s flower…
Love is faith’s flower, hope is its stem. Grace comes into us by faith, like water through the roots of a tree. It rises in us by hope, like sap rising through the trunk of a tree. And it matures in us by [love] as fruit matures on a tree’s branches, fruit for the neighbor’s eating.
— Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
« πλ | 3 Mar 2006 »
Man’s hankering curiosity…
[Man’s] hankering curiosity is so much stronger than his desire to obey the word of God.
— Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert
« πλ | 31 Oct 2005 »
Often people think they are lost…
Often people think they are lost. They think that nothing in the world can help them. And then God looks and says, “It is time.” And all at once everything looks different. Everything comes into a different light, and all at once you see that all is not lost, but won. Remember this, all is not lost in His eyes. “The lowly shall be lifted up, the first shall be last.”
— Ger Koopman
« πλ | 17 Dec 2004 »
On Choice
People often think that Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
« πλ | 13 Aug 2003 »
Once people stop believing…
Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.
— C.S. Lewis [via]
« πλ | 8 Apr 2005 »
Only he who believes is…
Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
« πλ | 25 Sep 2004 »
Pride of a mother…
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues—faith and hope.
— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
« πλ | 14 May 2006 »
Proclaim the Gospel …
Proclaim the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.
— St. Francis of Assisi
« πλ | 2 Sep 2003 »
Putting experience before faith…
There is a failure that comes of putting experience before faith. Sometimes we are too wise to succeed—world-wise.
— Percy C. Ainsworth
« πλ | 13 Aug 2005 »
Real worship…
Real worship involves waiting.
— Iris Murdoch, Bruno’s Dream [via]
« πλ | 3 Sep 2005 »
Seek not to understand…
Seek not to understand so that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand.
— St. Augustine
Kind of like the question about which came first, the chicken or the egg? Faith or trust?
« πλ | 14 Jul 2004 »
Seeking God for God or Just for the Light?
Know that when you seek anything of your own, you will never find God, because you do not seek God purely. You are seeking something along with God, and you are acting just as if you were to make a candle out of God in order to look for something with it. Once one finds the things one is looking for, one throws the candle away. This is what you are doing.
— Meister Eckhart
« πλ | 13 Jul 2004 »
Thank God for…
Thank God for what you have…trust Him for what you need.
— Author unknown
« πλ | 18 Mar 2005 »
The Kingdom of God
The Kingdom of God is any place where the will of God is done.
— A saying of Fr. Ken
« πλ | 26 Jan 2004 »
The danger is not…
The danger is not that the soul should doubt whether there is any bread [God], but that, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.
— Simone Wey
« πλ | 4 Aug 2004 »
The most real things…
But sometimes seeing is believing. And sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.
— The Conductor, Polar Express
« πλ | 29 Nov 2006 »
The perfect surrender and humiliation…
God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form…The perfect surrender and humiliation was undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man.
— C.S. Lewis
« πλ | 30 Dec 2004 »
The plant of our new life…
Faith is the root, the necessary beginning. Hope is the stem, the energy that makes the plant grow. Love is the fruit, the flower, the visible product, the bottom line. The plant of our new life in Christ is one; the life of God comes into us by faith, through us by hope, and out of us by the works of love.
— Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith [via]
« πλ | 20 Sep 2006 »
The principal part of faith…
The principal part of faith is patience.
— George MacDonald
« πλ | 21 Apr 2006 »
The process of conversion…
Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues…you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity…you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that.
— Flannery O’Connor (via this essay)
« πλ | 24 Aug 2005 »
There is a God we want…
There is a God we want, and there is a God who is and they are not the same God. The turning point of our lives is when we stop seeking the God we want and start seeking the God who is.
— Patrick Morley (via a comment at Raw Faith)
« πλ | 14 Apr 2004 »
To Know God as Unknown…
In the end, we know God as unknown. (In finem nostrae cognitionis Deum tamquam ignotum cognoscimus.)
— St. Thomas Aquinas, from commentary on Boethius’ De Sancta Trinitate
« πλ | 6 Oct 2003 »
To believe with certainty…
To believe with certainty, we must begin with doubting.
— Stanislaus Lescynski
« πλ | 27 Nov 2005 »
To love God in great things…
>
To love God in great things is not so perfect an act of faith as to worship them in small ones.
— Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment
« πλ | 28 Mar 2004 »
Too lonely to know…
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
— Kahlil Gibran
« πλ | 15 Jun 2006 »
Trust is the middle term…
The key to faith is love. We believe only if we love. Trust is the middle term; only if we love, do we trust; and only if we trust, do we believe.
— Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
« πλ | 2 Mar 2006 »
Two men please God…
Two men please God—who serves Him with all his heart because he knows Him; and he who seeks Him with all his heart because he knows Him not.
— Nikita Ivanovich Panin
« πλ | 16 Oct 2003 »
Very few people realize…
There are very few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into His hands, and let themselves be formed by His grace.
— St. Ignatius of Loyola
« πλ | 21 Aug 2004 »
Want to fly so much that…
“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively.
“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”
— Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers
« πλ | 4 Jan 2005 »
We do not do good works…
We do not do good works to get into heaven; we do good works because heaven has gotten to us.
— Paraphrasing on Peter Kreeft, “Justification by Faith”
« πλ | 8 Oct 2004 »
We no longer feel the shiver of fear…
We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
« πλ | 24 Dec 2004 »
We take for granted the slow miracle…
We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in a quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.
— St. Augustine
« πλ | 1 Jul 2005 »
What good is it that Christ was born…
What good is it that Christ was born [2,000] years ago if he is not born now in your heart?
— Meister Eckhart
« πλ | 26 Dec 2004 »
What the caterpillar calls…
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
— Richard Bach [via]
« πλ | 24 Sep 2005 »
What we carry in our hearts…
What we carry in our hearts is what we will have to answer for when we face God at the end of our journey.
— Author unknown
« πλ | 12 Dec 2003 »
When we lose God…
When we lose God, it is not God who is lost.
— Author unknown
« πλ | 30 Oct 2004 »
You don’t learn by having faith…
You don’t learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you’ve ever believed. And yet, all this is a matter of faith—the faith that there is a truth to be found.
It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith.
— Tzvi Freeman
« πλ | 14 Mar 2005 »
![[Jerusalem Cross with Heart]](http://cowpi.com/journal/grafiks/jerusalem-cross-heart.gif "Jerusalem Cross with Heart")