Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, impotent reason. Be silent, dull-witted nature, and learn from your Master your true condition, which you do not understand. Listen to God! See the Earth as a point compared with the vast circles it describes. Stand amazed that this circle itself is only a tiny point in relation to the course traced by the stars revolving in the firmament; that the whole visible world is no more than an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. ~Blaise Pascal, The Third Testament

God is always ready. With the intensity of his holy will, he longs for people of faith to speak, pray, live, and believe so completely in the living Jesus that he is at last able to intervene and act as he has always wanted to act. In answer to our faith, and to the measure of our faith, everything will be done just as we ask. There is no wall, no mountain, and no barrier too high for the prayer of faith. ~Eberhard Arnold

To be right with God is to be right with the universe; one with the power, the love, the will of the mighty Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything, and hates nothing but selfishness, which he will not have in his kingdom. ~George MacDonald, Discovering the Character of God

What the spiritual journey is all about is uniting our will with God’s will, wanting what He wants, loving what He loves, living a life that in all its aspects honors Him and gives Him glory. ~Ralph Martin

The Word of God may well require of me today something it had not demanded yesterday; consequently, in order to perceive this demand, I must, in the depth of my being, be open and attentive to the word. No relationship is closer, more rooted in being itself, than that between a [person] in grace and the Lord who gives grace. ~Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer

It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills. ~St. Thomas Aquinas

“Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them and people who look up with reverence to the greatest in the world. Thus Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity, waiting until he inclines himself toward us – the Holy One himself, God in the child in the manger. God is coming; the Lord Jesus is coming; Christmas is coming. Rejoice O Christendom. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is best to learn to silence the facilities and to cause them to be still, so that God may speak. ~St. John of the Cross

“The Christian family has a special vocation to witness to the paschal covenant of Christ by constantly radiating the joy of love and the certainty of the hope for which it must give an account: “The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the Kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come” (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, no. 35).“ ~St. Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 52

Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe . . . flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears. ~Robert Capon, Between Noon and Three