If you try your best to be the best parent you can be, you will have done all that a human being can do and all that God expects you to do.

Love makes us instinctively reach out to God and other people. Lust, on the other hand, is anything but godly and celebrates self-indulgence. Love comes with open hands and open heart; lust comes with only an open appetite. These are just some of the reasons that prostituting the true meaning of love-either with imagination or another person-is so destructive. It destroys that which is second only to our faith in God-namely, faith in those we love. It shakes the pillars of trust upon which present-or future-love is built, and it takes a long time to rebuild that trust when it is lost.

Only when we see that sacred, unadorned child of our devotion-the Babe of Bethlehem-will we know why the giving of gifts is so appropriate

A noble deed is a step toward God.

Surely the thing God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful, especially to those who don't expect it and often feel they don't deserve it.

Never check your religion at the door. Not ever.

In matters of religion a skeptical mind is not a higher manifestation of virtue than is a believing heart, and analytical deconstruction in the field of, say, literary fiction can be just plain old-fashioned destruction when transferred to families yearning for faith at home.