The sense of the joy in anything is the sense of Christ.

Every ordinary thing in your life is a word of God's love: your home, your work, the clothes you wear, the air you breathe, the food you eat.... the flowers under your feet are the courtesy of God's heart flung down on You! All these things say one thing only: "See how I love you."

It is a time of darkness, of faith. We shall not see Christ's radiance in our lives yet; it is still hidden in our darkness; nevertheless, we must believe that He is growing in our lives; we must believe it so firmly that we cannot help relating everything, literally everything, to this almost incredible reality.

Christ subjected himself to the law of the seed in the earth, to the law of rest and growth. He was "one of the children of the year," growing through rest, secret in his mothers womb, receiving the warmth of the sun through her, living the life of dependence, helplessness, littleness, darkness, and silence which, by a mystery of the Eternal Law, is the life of natural growth.

We are the mediocre, we are the half givers, we are the half lovers, we are the savourless salt. Break the hard crust of complacency. Quicken in us the sharp grace of desire.

Most people know the sheer wonder that goes with falling in love, how not only does everything in heaven and earth become new, but the lover himself becomes new. It is literally like the sap rising in the tree, putting forth new green shoots of life.

God is everywhere: yes, but how dim faith is, what a remote idea heaven is, in the modern world!