QUOTATION: God's Forgiveness

The sinful woman in the Gospel was pardoned greatly because she loved greatly. In Jesus, God comes to give love to us and to ask love of us.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Unbelief

If we don’t believe in the devil, sooner or later we won’t believe in God.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: Three Kinds of God

There are three possible kinds of God: the god of one’s own ego, in which the atheist believes, and which is also the god of modern confusionism; the god of nature, of stone and gold and silver, which belonged to the old religions of idolatry; and the Supreme God, who made both man and nature, and redeemed them both upon the Cross. Those who tell us that they deny the existence of God are merely substituting one god for another.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, On Being Human

QUOTATION: God's Friendship

God continually loves the universe into existence. Thus, God’s fundamental stance toward all finite things is one of friendship.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: Revelation

God wants to come to men through men.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Ministry and Life of Priests”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Our Relationship With the Lord

This relationship with the Lord is not intended as a duty or an imposition. It is a bond that comes from within. It is a relationship lived with the heart: it is our friendship with God, granted to us by Jesus, a friendship that changes our life and fills us with passion, with joy. Thus, the gift of piety stirs in us above all gratitude and praise. This is, in fact, the reason and the most authentic meaning of our worship and our adoration. When the Holy Spirit allows us to perceive the presence of the Lord and all his love for us, it warms the heart and moves us quite naturally to prayer and celebration.

--Pope Francis, General Audience, June 4, 2014

QUOTATION: Atheism and Human Value

For the past two hundred years, atheists have been loudly asserting that the dismissal of God will lead to human liberation. I would strenuously argue precisely the contrary. Once the human being is untethered from God, he becomes, in very short order, an object among objects, and hence susceptible to the grossest manipulation by the powerful and the self-interested.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: God's Existence is the Real Issue

The denial of God—or the blithe bracketing of the question of God—is not a harmless parlor game. Rather, it carries with it the gravest implications. If there is no God, then our lives do indeed belong to us, and we can do with them what we want. If there is no God, our lives have no ultimate meaning or transcendent purpose, and they become simply artifacts of our own designing. Accordingly, when they become too painful or too shallow or just too boring, we ought to have the prerogative to end them. We can argue the legality and even the morality of assisted suicide until the cows come home, but the real issue that has to be engaged is that of God’s existence.

--Bishop Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: The relation of the Father to the Son

God is therefore truly the Father, inasmuch as He is Father of truth; He does not create the Son from outside Himself, but generates Him from His own substance. That is to say, being wise, He generates Wisdom, being just, Justice, being eternal, the Eternal, being immortal, the Immortal, being invisible, the Invisible. Because He is Light, He generates Brightness, and because He is Mind, the Word.

--Rufinus, Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, 4.

QUOTATION: How the Religiously Insincere Act with God

You sometimes say of a man, "he is friendly, or courteous, or respectful, or considerate, or communicative; but, after all, there is something, perhaps without his knowing it, in the background. He professes to be agreed with me; he almost displays his agreement; he says he pursues the same objects as I; but still I do not know him, I do not make progress with him, I have no confidence in him, I do not know him better than the first time I saw him." Such is the way in which the double-minded approach the Most High,—they have a something private, a hidden self at bottom. They look on themselves, as it were, as independent parties, treating with Almighty God as one of their fellows. Hence, so far from seeking God, they hardly like to be sought by Him. They would rather keep their position and stand where they are,—on earth, and so make terms with God in heaven; whereas, "he that doeth truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God." [John iii. 21.]

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Sincerity and Hypocrisy”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 5.

QUOTATION: Society Cannot Exist Without God

If God exists, and deserves the name, He is to every human good what electricity is to an appliance, and religion is the plug. The decline in happiness, in morality, and in longevity is inevitable: religious death, or supernatural death, or spiritual death always leads to some kind of natural or cultural death. No nonreligious, anti-religious society has ever existed. One reason is that religion has always been the strongest ground for morality and no society can survive without morality, in fact without some kind of natural law morality, since the prevailing morality of our experts is not morality at all, only psychology.

--Peter Kreeft, quoted in "What I shall do with atheism is to refute it” California Catholic Daily, August 4, 2016

QUOTATION: God Loves Us Individually

God does not treat us as part of a collectivity. He knows each one by name. He calls each one personally.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: God Does Not Force Us to Love Him

We cannot escape God’s justice by denying Him, but His friendship is easy to evade. He never forces our love. The surrender of the will to God is all important in conversion because of this: God will not destroy our human freedom. He will not even give proofs so absolutely overpowering as to destroy all choice, for He always leaves a margin for love. Therefore a necessary prelude to conversion is a spirit become docile, teachable, and humble. For if we think we know it all, not even God can teach us.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: The Death of God

God will really be dead when no one will think of denying his existence. Until then, the death of God remains an unconfirmed rumor.”

--Etienne Gilson, “The Idea of God and the Difficulties of Atheism.”

QUOTATION: God's Love for Sinners

To say that God turns away from the sinful is like saying that the sun hides from the blind. 

--St. Anthony of Egypt

QUOTATION: Blaming God

The feeling that God is silent or absent, whether voiced as an accusation or as a complaint, is an almost spontaneous reaction to the experience of pain and injustice. The very people who do not credit God with their joy hold Him responsible in detail for human suffering.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Master in the Faith, 1990

QUOTATION: Tell God Everything

Never, then, forget his sweet presence, as do the greater part of men. Speak to him as often as you can; for he does not grow weary of this nor disdain it, as do the lords of the earth. If you love him, you will not be at a loss what to say to him. Tell him all that occurs to you about yourself and your affairs, as you would tell it to a dear friend. Look not upon him as a haughty sovereign, who will only converse with the great, and on great matters. He, our God, delights to abase himself to converse with us, loves to have us communicate to him our smallest, our most daily concerns. He loves you as much, and has as much care for you, as if he had none others to think of but yourself. He is as entirely devoted to your interests as though the only end of his providence were to succor you, of his almighty power to aid you, of his mercy and goodness to take pity on you, to do you good, and gain by the delicate touches of his kindness your confidence and love. Manifest, then, to him freely all your state of mind, and pray to him to guide you to accomplish perfectly his holy will. And let all your desires and plans be simply bent to discover his good pleasure, and do what is agreeable to his divine heart : Commit thy way to the Lord: l and desire of Him to direct thy ways, and that all thy counsels may abide in Him. [Tobit. 4:20]

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and Perfection

QUOTATION: Human Life

God’s love does not distinguish between the infant in the mother’s womb or the child or the youth or the adult or the older person. In each one God sees his image and likeness. Human life is a manifestation of God and his glory.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: God Will Triumph

Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death, do not have the final say.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Be Grateful for God's Gifts to Us

If we have any natural defect either in mind or body, a bad memory, slowness of apprehension, mean abilities, a crippled limb, or weak health, let us not therefore make lamentation. What were our desserts, and what obligation had God to bestow upon us a mind more richly endowed, or a body more perfectly framed? Could he not have created us mere brute animals? Or have left us in our own nothingness? Who is there that ever receives a gift and tries to make bargains about it? Let us, then, return him thanks for what, through a pure act of his goodness, he has bestowed upon us; and let us rest content with the manner in which he has treated us.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and Perfection