S G

“He was showing how marriage is not a contract, involving merely an exchange of goods and services. Rather, marriage is a covenant, involving an exchange of persons. Kippley's argument was that every covenant has an act whereby the covenant is enacted and renewed; and the marital act is a covenant act. When the marriage covenant is renewed, God uses it to give new life. To renew the marital Covenant and use birth control to destroy the potential for new life is tantamount to receiving the Eucharist and spitting it on the ground.”
― Scott Hahn, Rome Sweet Home

“LXXIV

One of the Fathers said: Just as it is impossible for a man to see his face in troubled water, so too the soul, unless it be cleansed of alien thoughts, cannot pray to God in contemplation.”
― Thomas Merton

“Scripture is a record of the same story, told again and again, in different ways but always with the same theme, for more than three thousand years. God loves man. Man betrays God. Then God calls man back to his friendship. Sometimes that call involves some very painful suffering, and for good reason. God respects our freedom. But he will not interfere with our choices or their consequences, no matter how unpleasant. As a result, the struggle in the human heart between good and evil-- a struggle that seems burned into our chromosomes-- projects itself onto the world, to ennoble or deform it. The beauty and the barbarism we inflict on one another leave their mark on creation.”
― Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

“They who live in prosperity and have no experience of adversity know nothing of the state of their souls. In the first place, tribulation opens the eyes which prosperity had kept shut. St. Paul remained blind after Jesus Christ appeared to him and during his blindness he perceived the errors in which he lived. During his imprisonment in Babylon, King Manasseh had recourse to God, was convinced of the malice of his sins, and did penance for them. And after that he was in distress. He prayed to the Lord his God and did penance exceedingly before the God of his fathers. The Prodigal, when he found himself under the necessity of feeding swine and afflicted with hunger. exclaimed: "I will arise and go to my father.”
― St Alphonsus Liguori