There is a moment when the interior light of the "eyes of faith" becomes one with the exterior light that shines from Christ, and this occurs because man's thirst, as he strives and seeks after God, is quenched as he finds repose in the revealed form of the Son.

The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.

Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man.

But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former.

Prior to an individual's encounter with the love of God at a particular time in history, however, there has to be another, more fundamental and archetypal encounter, which belongs to the conditions of possibility of the appearance of divine love to man.

To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.

Every experience of beauty points to [eternity].