Paul Jensen > Recent Status Updates

"In the same way as strength is made perfect in weakness charity is made perfect in temptations against charity. The occasion does not make the man; it shows what he is. It would be easy to be patient if there were no occasion for impatience."

"Nothing is so inappropriate to those repenting as an agitated spirit, because conversion requires great humility, and anger is a sign of every kind of presumption."

"811. I should not be a Christian, but for the miracles, said Saint Augustine."

"800. The supposition that the apostles were impostors is very absurd. Let us think it out. Let us imagine those twelve men, assembled after the death of Jesus Christ, plotting to say that He was risen. By this they attack all the powers. The heart of man is strangely inclined to fickleness, to change, to promises, to gain."

"Grace is a type of glory", just as the Law is a type for grace.

What a fine start to the section on typology and the Old Testament.

"364. It is a rare thing for anyone to fear himself enough."

"Fear of death is a property of nature that comes from disobedience; but terror at death is evidence of unrepented sins. Christ fears death, but does not tremble, in order to demonstrate clearly the properties of His two natures."

"The most unreasonable things in the world become most reasonable, because of the unruliness of men. What is less reasonable than to choose the eldest son of a queen to rule a State? We do not choose as captain of a ship the passenger who is of the best family."

"The government founded on opinion and imagination reigns for some time, and this government is pleasant and voluntary; that founded on might lasts forever"

"You cannot escape shame except by shame."

"Repentance is a contract with God for a second life...Repentance is self-condemning reflection and carefree self-care. Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair."

#233 on his Wager: "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is."

#194 Pascal caricatures the careless atheist who does not inquire his cause or purpose: "As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be for ever assigned."

"There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they listen to vespers."

"Those honor nature well who teach that she can speak on everything, even on theology."

It is interesting to hear Seneca recall the story of a wealthy man so pampered that he had to be told when he was sitting. Seneca says such vice and excess is not true leisure, but simply pitiful unlearning of basic human habits. Such people pass through life half-alive, wasteful and unperceptive of the time they have. This is a stern message to a modern, vice-driven, and retirement-oriented society.

"You will hear many men saying: 'After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.' And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business."

After providing St. Alberts commentary on Mystical Theology, this book then goes into Thomas' Commentary on the Sentences [from Lombard] and his discussion of prayer.

"God has a father's attitude toward good men and loves them in a manly fashion. 'Let them be afflicted by toil and sorrow and loss,' he says 'that they may acquire true strength.'

The section on Dionysius' Mystical Theology adequately explains not only what negative theology is, but why it is absolutely necessary as the way to approach theology. It wonderfully illustrates the transcendence of God from all else that is.

The chapter on Atheism is a must-read, and it is only 5 pages in my copy. It covers the inconsistency of such a view, the causes of it, how that view harms human dignity, and how even among the greatest philosophers it was different than modern atheism. It was as if I was reading a text made for the current century. The founder of the Scientific Method has many wise words on this.

"It is a common complaint, unfortunately too well founded, that there are large numbers of Christians in our own time who are entirely ignorant of those truths necessary for salvation."

"There is then..no reason for wonder that the corruption of morals and depravity of life is already so great, and ever increasingly greater, not only among uncivilized peoples but even in those very nations that are called Christian"