Prayer

 

 

 

We might, to start with, note that, when we pray, we should not be in too much of a hurry to think about God. We should think about ourselves and what we need. And we should present this before God. If you want to know why you should pray; the short answer is that God wants you to. And not because he craves for your attention and wants you to flatter him, but because he loves you and wants what is best for you and because praying is very good for you. Of course your prayer doesn’t do anything for God, still less could it change God. God is just totally and absolutely and unconditionally in love with you and stays that way without a shadow of alteration. 

Prayer is good for us first of all because in prayer (I mean real prayer: asking for what we want) we understand more deeply that we are children of God and that he is our loving Father. And there is nothing selfish about that. It is normal human behaviour. What would you think of a child who never asked her parents for anything? What would her parents think of her? Would they think her to be unselfish? Or would they think her to be a dreadful little prig?

When you pray, consider what you want and need and never mind how vulgar or childish it might appear. If you want very much to pass that exam or get to know that girl or boy better, that is what you should pray for. You could let world peace rest for a while. You may not be ready yet to want that passionately. When you pray you must come before God as honestly as you can. There is no point in pretending to him. One of the great human values of prayer is that you face the facts about yourself and admit to what you want; and you know you can talk about this to God because he is totally loving and accepting. In true prayer you must meet God and meet yourself where you really are, for it is just by this that God will move you on from where you really are. For prayer is a bit of a risk. If you pray and acknowledge your most infantile desires, there is every danger that you may grow up a bit, that God will grow you up. When (as honestly as you can) you speak to God of your desires, very gently and tactfully he will often reveal to you that in fact you have deeper and more mature desires. But there is only one way to find this out: to start from where you are. It is no good pretending to yourself that you are full of high-minded aspirations. You have to wait until you are. If a child is treated as though she were already an adult, she will never become an adult. Prayer is the way in which our Father in heaven leads each of us by different paths to be saints, that is to say, with him.

In: Herbert McCabe, God, Christ and Us

Self-evident

Não há nada que mais precise de ser dito do que as evidências.

 The most urgent mission of our times is to explicitly state evident things.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 The Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.
Chesterton, Heretics, 1905.

Beard Apologetics

 

Our Head is Christ crucified and buried, who was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven. And the Holy Spirit came from our head. To what did he come? To the beard. The beard is the sign of strong men; a beard is typical of young, vigorous, energetic, eager people. That is why we say, "He's a bearded fellow", when we describe someone of this character. The fragrant oil therefore fell first upon the Apostles, upon those who withstood the first assaults of the world, and therefore the Holy Spirit descended on them. For they who first began to dwell together in unity, suffered persecution. but because the oil had flowed down onto the beard, they suffered, but were not overcome. Their head had preceded them on the path of suffering, and from him the oil flowed. Who could conquer the beard when such an example had gone before?

In: Saint Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 132.

  Weird Life  

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!In: Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.

Catholicism in an age of discontent

Our postmodern age needs both the radiant light of Christ’s theological wisdom (Balthasar) and encouragement to venture out in search of decisive philosophical understanding (de Lubac). 

Along with these two imperatives we must adopt a third, one brought to the fore in the current pontificate. Our theological and philosophical efforts to overcome postmodern fear of—and despair about—truth must be accompanied by spiritual charity toward those who live disoriented and loveless lives in today’s secular culture.

The deepest threat to Catholic intellectual life today stems not from a lack of engagement with the outside world, but from ignorance of our own tradition and widespread loss of authentic biblical and doctrinal thinking. Dogmatic amnesia within the Church is the central intellectual challenge facing the Church today. 

De Lubac’s apologetic response was to show how Catholicism provides the authentic answer to the human search for genuine solidarity and universal communion. Today, the challenge is different: to convince human beings that the search itself is even possible.

Consequently, the Church needs to make philosophical arguments in the public square, ones that show that the world is inherently intelligible (and that our minds are naturally made for objective truth). This will resonate powerfully in today’s skeptical consensus. 

In short, the Church should simultaneously promote Catholicism as the religion of mystery and as the religion that promotes reason’s full capacity for grasping universal truths. 

What is needed is a Catholic theological interpretation of modern pluralistic democracy, one that insists on real space for the ideas and active contributions of religious traditions, while underscoring the value of respectful argument and even friendship among those who hold competing views.

A key task, then, which twentieth-century Catholic theology largely ignored, is to show the fundamental compatibility of the modern natural sciences with a deeper philosophy of nature and a metaphysics of the human person, one religious in orientation.



Thomas Joseph White, Catholicism in an age of discontent, in: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/11/catholicism-in-an-age-of-discontent

Mercy and Firmness of Doctrine 

 

In the Church we again meet with this same harmony between things most difficult to reconcile.
In her, charity most compassionate and doctrine most firm and uncompromising are united in one love, which is zeal for God's glory and the salvation of souls. She knows she can do no good without combating evil, that she cannot preach the Gospel without fighting heresy. 

Mercy and firmness of doctrine can exist only when united; separated they die, and we have left but two corpses, namely, humanitarian Liberalism with its false serenity, and fanaticism with its false zeal. 

It has been said: "The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle, because they do not believe, and intolerant in practice, because they do not love." 

On the one hand, theory is opposed to practice; on the other, it penetrates and arranges all things with firmness and gentleness.

R. Garrigou-Lagrange, in: God, His Existence and Nature, Vol. II, 412, 1936