Literary and Spiritual Excerpts
To all ye Pilgrims: Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, squashes, and garden vegetable, and has made the forest to abound with game …
The Maker must be one, since if there were two they would necessarily either concur or not concur in their creating. Now agreement would be evidence of the weakness of both or either of them, …
After ten months praying in a cave in Manresa, St. Ignatius received a vision that permitted him “to see God in all things” — the stated goal of his Spiritual Exercises, which are part of …
Many things know we that we seldom think on: and in the things of the soul, the knowledge without the remembrance little profiteth. What availeth it to know that there is a God, which thou …
Unto thy Son say thou that I am His, And to me graceless make Him gracious. Sad Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss, Nor yet when sorrowful clerk Theophilus, Whose bitter sins were …
How often on that day, think you, did I not on the return journey look back upon the peak of the mountain! In comparison with the loftiness of human contemplation, unless one is mired in …
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature’s aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this …
O universal Mother, who dost keep From everlasting thy foundations deep, Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee! All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea, All things that fly, or on …
Behold the sun, everywhere bright and warm, and all the immortal things that are bathed in heat and bright radiance. Behold the rain, everywhere dark and cold; and from the earth issue forth close-pressed and …
(1) It is wise to hearken, not to me but to my word, and to confess that all things are one…. (57) Good and ill are one…. (59) Couples are things whole and things not …
Know that guidance in belief in God and His prophets is not like guidance in what is legislated as to acts. And how does this disturb you? You call a man a true believer for …
Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another. Since they have uttered many lawless deeds of …
The appearance of Virtue in its fullest exuberance is no more than the result of compliance with the Tao. Tao, considered as an entity, is obscure and vague. Vague and obscure! yet within it there …
Europe is the Church, and the Church is Europe. It is immaterial to the historical value of this historical truth whether it be presented to a man who utterly rejects Catholic dogma or to a …
“Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993” On the domed ceiling God is thinking: I made them my joy, and everything else I created I made to bless them. But see what they do! I …
The Ascent of the Mind to God It is possible to contemplate God not only outside us and within us, but also above us. Outside us we contemplate Him through His vestige, within us through …