Paul Murray > Quotes

“Prayer - Christian prayer - by its very nature is born out of an acknowledgment of need, out of an honest recognition of spiritual poverty.”
― Paul Murray, Praying with Confidence: Aquinas on the Lord's Prayer

“St Thomas, in his commentary on Psalm 16, writes: `When God examines, he does three things, namely, he tests, he visits, he examines.''`' What is more, as a result of this testing, as soon as God finds that an individual possesses a certain integrity, there begins the deeper testing, the more searching examination. Thomas cites Jer. 17.10: I, the Lord, search the heart and probe the loins. I give everyone according to his way.20 Finding oneself under this kind of mysterious, divine scrutiny is a wonderful sign of grace and of progress in the spiritual life. But the experience itself is not
`wonderful'. Thomas notes: `this examination is severe and strong, and so much so that no one would withstand it unless helped by God.'21”
― Paul Murray, Praying with Confidence: Aquinas on the Lord's Prayer

“The word `Father' is a small word but, by pronouncing it in prayer, and in particular by repeating the phrase `Our Father', we are achieving `five things', Thomas tells us in his Lectures on St Matthew. First of all, the words `instruct us in our faith'; second, they `raise our hopes'; third, `they serve to stimulate charity'; fourth, they invite us `to imitate God'; and fifth, they call us `to humility'.”
― Paul Murray, Praying with Confidence: Aquinas on the Lord's Prayer

“Years earlier, in his commentary on the Sentences, he had written: `someone can, while preserving charity, desire temporal evil for another person ... but not precisely as that person's evil, but rather as an evil that prevents other evils from occurring.'32”
― Paul Murray, Praying with Confidence: Aquinas on the Lord's Prayer