Desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer. Lack of desire is poverty.

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.

Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.

Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.

Because I am a Christian, therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God's Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scriptures in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation.

Every word of Holy Scripture was a love letter from God directed very personally to us and he asked us whether we loved Jesus.

It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself.