Christian obedience, by its very nature, has a heroic character.

There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God.

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.

Only in Christ are all things in communion. He is the point of convergence of all hearts and beings and therefore the bridge and the shortest way from each to each.

Faith means the fundamental response to the love that has offered itself up for me. It thus becomes clear that faith is ordered primarily to the inconceivability of God's love, which surpasses us and anticipates us. Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the 'work' of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it.

The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity.

Every experience of beauty points to [eternity].