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.

Beauty is the arrowhead of evangelization.

Love is not a sentiment or feeling. Love is actively willing the good of the other.

Both total accommodation to the culture and total resistance to it are usually signs of intellectual sickness.

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.

There's no way up but down.

The surest sign that God is alive in you is joy.