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.

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

The only thing particularly new about the "new atheism" is its nastiness.

The holiness of God is like a white light: pure, simple, complete. But when that light shines, as it were, through the prisms of individual human lives, it breaks into an infinite variety of colors... each one reveals a unique dimension of the divine holiness.

For many people, the big feast of the year is Christmas, but for Christians, the truly great feast is Easter. Without Easter, without the Resurrection, we would not have the gift of salvation. Jesus had to rise from the dead or else he would have just been another failed Messiah and his birth would be a forgotten footnote of history.

Beauty is the arrowhead of evangelization.

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