Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God.

Just because you cannot realize your highest aspirations in work does not mean you have chosen wrongly, or are not called to your profession, or that you should spend your life looking for the perfect career that is devoid of frustration. ... You should expect to be regularly frustrated in your work even though you may be in exactly the right vocation.

The Gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking.

If I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential.

The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable — it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid — God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born — God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.

Like a baby learning language, we learn how to communicate with God by listening to His words first.