QUOTATION: Finding God

The truth of the matter is, not that God is hard to find, but rather that man is afraid of being found.

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

QUOTATION: Man is a Metaphysical Animal

For the great difference between an animal and man is that an animal can have its desires satisfied but man cannot. All that any animal wants is to have its immediate needs granted; this is never the case with man. Man is animated by an urge, an unquenchable desire to enlarge his vision and to know the ultimate meaning of things. If he were only an animal, he would never use symbols, for what are these but attempts to transcend the visible? No, he is a “metaphysical animal”, a being ever longing for answers to the last question.

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

QUOTATION: The Nature of Man

Man is not an angel, nor is he a devil. He is not intrinsically corrupt (as theologians began claiming four hundred years ago) nor is he intrinsically divine (as philosophers began saying fifty years ago). Rather, man has aspirations to good which he finds it impossible to realize completely by himself; at the same time, he has an inclination toward evil which solicits him away from these ideals. He is like a man who is down a well through his own stupidity. He knows he ought not to be there, but he cannot get out by himself. Or to change the picture, he is like a clock whose mainspring is broken. He needs to be fixed on the inside, but the repairs must be supplied from without. He is mistaken if he is an optimist, who believes evolution will give him a mainspring, or a pessimist, who believes that nobody can fix him. He is a creature who can run well again, but only if some watchmaker will have the kindness to repair him.

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

QUOTATION: Modern Man

The modern man is no longer a unity, but a confused bundle of complexes and nerves. He is so dissociated, so alienated from himself that he sees himself less as a personality than as a battlefield where a civil war rages between a thousand and one conflicting loyalties. There is no single overall purpose in his life. His soul is comparable to a menagerie in which a number of beasts, each seeking its own prey, turn one upon the other. Or he may be likened to a radio that is tuned in to several stations; instead of getting any one clearly, it receives only an annoying static.

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

QUOTATION: Man the Image of God

When we say that man is the image of God, it means that he is a being designed for relationship; it means that, in and through all his relationships, he seeks that relation which is the ground of his existence.

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Many Religions-- One Covenant: Israel, the Church and the World, 1998

QUOTATION: God is Our Fuel

A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.

--C. S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Man's Ingratitude to God

And man does not love God! He offends Him! Ah! God brings contempt on Himself by dint of loving. One might say that He sought It! Would you allow yourselves to be thus despised and insulted by your children, your subordinates? God showers man with riches, loads him with benefits in spite of his sins, his daily sins! It is that he may return to Him, be conquered by Him. We must have the hearts of demons not to love God!

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Knowledge of God

Ideas are poured into the angel by God. Man knows from the bottom up; angels know from the top down.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Union of God and Man

When man stood naked and trembling before his Creator, who could have made him believe that one day his unhappy nature would be united to God in one and the same person? This union was so close that even the supreme moment of the Cross could not sever it. Death dissolved the union between soul and body, but could not separate the Divinity from the humanity, for what Christ had once taken upon Himself for love of us He never abandoned.

Thus was our peace established.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: The Brotherhood of Man

To believe in the brotherhood of man without the Fatherhood of God would make men a race of bastards.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen