God's favorites, especially God's favorites, are not immune from the bewildering times when God seems silent. Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either. Faith demands uncertainty, confusion. The Bible includes many proofs of God's concern - some quite spectacular - but no guarantess. A guarantee would, after all, preclude faith.

...the highest sign of friendship is that of giving another the privilege of sharing your inner thought.

In order to make a success of old age, one must begin it earlier, and not try to postpone it as long as possible. In the middle of life we must stop to think, to organize our existence with an eye to a still distant future, instead of allowing ourselves to be entirely sucked into the professional and social whirl. It is then that it is important to give place little by little to less external activities, less technical and more cultural, which will survive the moment of retirement.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.

God leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterward, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us.

We are nearly always longing for an easy religion, easy to understand and easy to follow; a religion with no mystery, no insoluble problems,no snags; a religion that would allow us to escape from our miserable human condition; a religion in which contact with God spares us all strife, all uncertainty,all suffering and all doubt; in short, a religion without a cross

If there had been no fear of failure, neither would there be any joy in success.