Quotes from Romano Guardini

Without the religious element, life is like an engine running without oil-it seizes up.

The idea that everyone is strong enough to bear immediate contact with God is false, and conceivable only by an age that has forgotten what it means to stand in the direct ray of divine power, that substitutes sentimental religious 'experience' for the overwhelming reality of God's presence. To claim that everyone could and should be exposed to that reality is sacrilegious.

For the greatest things are accomplished in silence—not in the clamor and display of superficial eventfulness, but in the deep clarity of inner vision; in the almost imperceptible start of decision, in quiet overcoming and hidden sacrifice.

Jesus was no cold Superman—he was more human than any of us. Entirely pure, unweakened by evil, he was loving and open to the core. His ardor, truth, sensitivity, power, capacity for joy and pain were unlimited, and everything that happened to him happened in the immeasurableness of his divinity.

To know Christ entails accepting his will as norm. When we feel this we draw back, startled for it means the cross. The it is better to say honestly: "I can't yet," than to mouth pious phrases. Slow there with the large words "self-suffender," and "sacrifice." It is better to admit our weakness and ask him to teach us strength.

None of the great things in human life springs from the intellect; every one of them issues from the heart and its love.

Asceticism means that a man resolves to live as a man.

something must exist in which the truth of the heart can constantly renew itself, in which the spirit can be cleansed, the eye cleared, the character strengthened. And there is: adoration. Nothing is more important for man than to incline his spirit before God, personally to experience the truth that is God—this is great and sacred and salutary for body and soul.

Essentially a soldier, the Christian is always on the lookout.

The Transfiguration is the summer lightning of the coming Resurrection. Also of our own resurrection, for we too are to partake

and Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men" (Luke 2:52),

Guardini recognized that the liturgy is the true, living environment for the Bible and that the Bible can be properly understood only in this living context within which it first emerged.

The love of the saints arises from a selflessness which comes from God alone and which, with holy earnestness, desires the good of others. Is it not right, therefore, that we should continue to seek this love, even after the hearts in which it lived have ceased to beat on earth? Death according to Christian belief is not an end but a transition. Those who die in the name of Christ do not enter into the void but into the fullness of holy reality.

The saints reflect the majesty of God. This is how it has come about that from the earliest days of Christianity there has existed a living relationship between the faithful and those who, while on earth, proved themselves the friends of God in a very special way — namely, the saints.

To seek the love of those who have fully entered into communion with God, who are at one with His will and filled with His grace, is a natural expression of the life of faith. But in addition to the appeal, praise takes a prominent place, rejoicing at the devout and noble lives of the saints, their deeds and victory, and at the divine guidance manifested in them. They are the witnesses to redemption.

The profoundest motive which leads us toward the saints is the desire simply to be in their company — to abide with them. It is love seeking the communion of those who have dedicated their lives to love and who are now fulfilled in it; it is the desire for that holy atmosphere in which the soul can breathe and for the mysterious current which nourishes it; it is the longing for the answer to the ultimate meaning of existence.

In a closer scrutiny of the lives of certain Christians we may be impressed by the discovery of a close connection with a saint. The relationship to the saints is wholesome and fundamentally natural and right. Admittedly, they were only human beings, but they have entered into the mystery of God and the new creation is completed in them. The believer does not seek in them great personalities, but rather God's witnesses in whom God has been fulfilled.

The saints are the explorers in the kingdom of God, the discoverers of His magnitude and power. Thus they blaze a trail which others can tread and they create a way of life which others, who could not have created it for themselves, can also adopt. A saint who is spiritually linked to us may truly become a guide and teacher; such a relationship is, or at least can be, completely mutual.

The saints do not live merely in books and pictures but in reality. They love those who are joined with them in Christ; and so from this union of a common love there is no knowing what contacts and relationships may spring.

Another step is the acceptance of our destiny. Destiny is not accident. It possesses a logical consistency which is determined externally by the connection of events but also internally by the nature and character of the person involved.

The Rosary is not a road, but a place, and it has no goal but a depth. To linger in it has great compensations.

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On the other hand, if a renunciation is to be truly heroic, the thing renounced must admittedly be valuable.

But when man confronts the restlessness of his intellect and is caught in the whirl of modern life, he loses all relation to the Rosary.