Sublime

The most influential medieval apologist of Western Christendom was its most influential theologian: Thomas Aquinas.

This among all the ferryman’s virtues was one of the greatest: he knew how to listen like few others could.

Apparently, in Augustine’s time everyone read aloud. That St. Ambrose had direct access to the meaning of the text showed that the inner was not merely the locus of desires but could be a storehouse of experiences of the truth. What was new for Augustine—not found in Plato’s philosophy nor in Jesus’ contagious love—was that the saving truth was acc

As the old Franciscan slogan goes, “Preach the gospel always. And when necessary, use words.” Or as our seventy-year-old revolutionary Catholic nun, Sister Margaret, puts it, “We are trying to shout the gospel with our lives.” Many spiritual seekers have not been able to hear the words of Christians because the lives of Christians have been making

Had Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle stood for an instant in the light that came out of that little cave, they would have known that their own light was not universal. It is far from certain, indeed, that they did not know it already. Philosophy also, like mythology, had very much the air of a search.

‘Who hears these sounds?’ till the reality is reached.

The Buddha once spent a night in a potter’s shed. In the same shed there was a young recluse who had arrived there earlier.1 They did not know each other. The Buddha observed the recluse, and thought to himself: ‘Pleasant are the ways of this young man. It would be good if I should ask about him’. So the Buddha asked him: ‘O bhikkhu,2 in whose name

Never did he allow the meannesses of human respect to degrade his Christian dignity.

there are three ways of knowing God: (1) in the creation, (2) in God’s actions through history, and (3) in the highest form of the knowledge of God—to know God tamquam ignotum (to know God as the unknown). The highest form of talking about the Trinity is to know that one does not know.