Education as Life

Education in the Church’s doctrines is not merely a matter of abstraction or learning, a kind of theological grammar. Salvation in Christ is not simply a matter of the mind or of checking off a list of the correct ideas. Education in the faith requires witness, testimony to one’s relationship with Christ and how one came to know, love, and serve him. This can be presented in words, but it most powerfully displays itself in a way of life that demonstrates how the revelatory truths of the faith expressed in doctrines are concretized in actions and activities. Education in the Church’s faith falters and fails if it is not rooted in an invitation to accept a unique way of life. If the teacher does not embody this way of life in Christ-like behaviors, then the risk is that the doctrines might be presented correctly, but the meaning and mysticism of those doctrines will be thwarted.

~ Fr. Stephen Grunnow, “A Word from the Institute,” Evangelization and Culture, Autumn 2023

Love and Fidelity

What is love without fidelity? In the ultimate analysis, it is nothing but a lie. For the deepest meaning of ever love, the inner “word” uttered in love, is the orientation toward and giving of oneself to the beloved, a giving that knows no time limit. No fluctuation in the course of life can shatter it. Only a deep change in the beloved person can affect our love if it be true love. A man who would say, “I love you now, but how long it will last, I cannot tell,” does not truly love; he does not even suspect the very nature of love. Faithfulness is so essentially one with love, that everyone, at least as long as he loves, must consider his devotion an undying devotion. This holds good for every love, for parental and filial love, for friendship and for spousal love. The deeper a love, the more it is pervaded by fidelity.

~ Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living

In Your Hands

This is the law of life on earth:
for every thing that comes to birth,
man and woman, child and mother,
the life of each is in the other.

This is the law of life in Heaven:
we must forgive to be forgiven.
Hands that close and will not give,
cannot receive, and will not live.

Thus by Thy divine decree,
to each other, as to Thee,
we must say with trepidation,
“In your hands is my salvation.”

~ Peter Kreeft, “In Your Hands,” An Ocean Full of Angels

St. Augustine on the Incarnation

Man’s Maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breasts; that the Bread might be hungry, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired from the journey; that the Truth might be accused by false witnesses, the Judge of the living and the dead be judged by a mortal judge, Justice be sentenced by the unjust, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Vine be crowned with thorns, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might be made weak, that He who makes well might be wounded, that Life might die. He was made man to suffer these and similar undeserved things for us, that He might free us who were undeserving; and He who on account of us endured such great evils, merited no evil, while we who through Him were so bountifully blessed, had no merits to show for such blessings. Therefore, because of all this, He who before all ages and without a beginning determined by days was the Son of God, saw fit in these latter days to be the Son of man; and He, who was born of the Father but not made by the Father, was made in the mother whom He had made, that He might sometime be born here on earth of her who could never have been anywhere except through Him.

~ St. Augustine, Christmas Sermon 191

A New Thing Comes

Even in the old days [God] never asked men to do what was reasonable. Men can do that for themselves. They can buy and sell, heal and govern. But then out of some deep place comes the command to do what makes no sense of all – to build a ship on dry ground; to sit among the dunghills; to marry a whore; to set their son on the altar of sacrifice. Then, if men have faith, a new thing comes.

~ William Golding, The Spire

The Rules of the Drink

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

~ G. K. Chesterton, Heretics