Sinners think they are saints, but saints know they are sinners.

God's interventions are miracles: events that cannot happen by merely natural agents but only by a supernatural agent. They no more interfere with our free will than natural events like earthquakes. We choose how to respond to them.

Great saints have often been made out of great sinners, but not one was ever made out of a wimp.

Faith is the root, the necessary beginning. Hope is the stem, the energy that makes the plant grow. Love is the fruit, the flower, the visible product, the bottom line. The plant of our new life in Christ is one; the life of God comes into us by faith, through us by hope, and out of us by the works of love.

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

The national anthem of hell is, "I Did It My Way."

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes.