The Bible constantly warns against a merely mercenary relationship with God - a friendship of convenience or self-interest. We should not love God simply because doing so will produce many consolations in our life. We must enter a true relationship, were we fall in love not with His benefits, but with Him.

Begin with the beautiful, which leads you to the good, which leads you to the truth.

Love without truth devolves into sentimentality. Truth without love becomes cold and calculated.

Easter is an earthquake, an explosion. If you see it as less than that, you're not getting it.

We have laws against polluting our rivers but not against polluting our minds.

The slightest cooperation with God's grace can provoke a massive spiritual change.

Again, I hear almost everyday from atheists who write off religion as primitive, premodern nonsense. I summon Aquinas, Augustine, Paul [of Tarsus], Teresa of Avila, Joseph Ratzinger, and Edith Stein-in all their intellectual rigor-as allies in the the struggle against this dismissive atheism.