Quote of the day

"Chastity is a decision to die to self and to selflessly love (or to die trying)." — Arleen Spenceley

Interested in saints and spiritual healing? Check out my Patheos blog, Feast of Eden.

Quote of the day

Father Canavan makes me laugh at the Human Life Foundation Dinner, October 2006

"[Coming] to believe is a process that goes on all our lives and is never completely finished. No matter how deeply we believe, we can always believe more deeply, and God will lead us to a steadily more profound faith through the experiences of our lives, if we will let Him. But what is of immediate interest to us here is the coming to believe of the person who has little or no faith in God. "Acting as if” is the way in which he begins the process of coming to believe. ...

"We go through our entire lives "acting as if." No one would ever marry, or have children, or choose a career, or sign a contract if he insisted on certainty in advance. "Marry in haste and repent at leisure" is a salutary warning, but it does not mean putting off marriage until we are absolutely certain that we are marrying the right person. That kind of certainty is not to be had in this world, and insisting on having it means choosing to remain single.

"The same is true of our approach to God. We cannot begin if we insist on beginning with certainty. "Blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed," said our Lord to doubting Thomas (John 20:29). Instead of waiting until all questions are answered and all doubts removed before we begin our quest for God, the better course is to do something—say a prayer, for instance."

— Francis Canavan S.J. (1917-2009), "Acting as If," from The Light of Faith, available from the Calix Society

Quote of the day

"How does one get out [of evil]? In short, one must begin by seeing the hazard, the wickedness of the thing. It is difficult, in part because we live in a lonely, individualistic milieu that tries to trick us into denying the relational aspect of humanity. We are lulled into believing that we answer only to our own desires and objectives, denying that we are not individuals in isolation but rather individuals born into a great chain of relationships.

"With those relationships come duties, such as those to parents, brothers and sisters, extended family. Later on, duties to schoolmates, teachers, coaches, employers, coworkers, etc. Absent all of those relationships, however, and therefore most central, we are children of God, made in His image and likeness; in our relationship to Him we recognize that we owe duties to Him as well, to be grateful, to love Him, and to love ourselves for His having made us. We come to see that the so-called 'victimless crimes' of libertarian fantasy, such as prostitution, and 'solitary pursuits' such as substance abuse and pornography are grave violations of our own dignity, with consequences that deeply affect our abilities to relate to one another."

—Fallen Sparrow