Great Throughts Treasury

"Every quest for unity among men implies first of all that a man who is engaged in it is careful to see that he has this unity in his own person."

"In your persistent questioning, "Who do you say that I am?" You are the one who loves me into endless life. You open up the way of risk. You go ahead of me along the way of holiness, where happy are they who die of love, where the ultimate response is martyrdom. Day by day you transfigure the "no" in me into "Yes". You ask me, not for a few scraps, but for the whole of my existence. You are the one who prays in me by day and night. My stammerings are prayer: simply calling you by your name, Jesus, fills our communion to the full. You are the one who, every morning, slips on my finger the ring of the prodigal son, the ring of festival. So why have I wavered so long? You have been seeking me unwearyingly. Why did I hesitate once again, asking for time to deal with my own affairs? Once I had set my hand to the plough, why did I look back? Without realizing it, I was making myself unfit to follow you. Yet, though I had never seen you, I loved you. You kept on saying: Live the little bit of the gospel you have grasped. Proclaim my life. Light fire on the earth... You, follow me... Until one day I understood: you were asking me to commit myself to the point of no return."

"The more a believer wishes to live the absolute call of God, the more essential it is to do so in the heart of human distress."

"When the Church listens, it cures, it reconciles, it becomes what it is in the most luminiscent of itself: vivid reflex of love."

"I say to myself, go on seeking, be glad for being sensitive, be glad you're able to go beyond the resistance inside you. It is our resistance to what we experience that makes creativity possible. So don't get rid of resistance like that by going around it or trying to eliminate it. Our own limitations put up strong resistance, but it's because of that that we are creators."