Quotes from Frank Sheed

To say that one sees the answer clearly would be to say that the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity is no mystery at all. We know that the Three Persons are not each other: we know that each is infinite and wholly God.

The whole of this discourse, from the fourteenth chapter of St. John to the seventeenth, should be read and read again: everything is in it.

What is sure is what God has revealed. With that we can start our exploration. In our exploring what is sure is that what the Church has defined is true, what the Church has condemned is false: Christ established a Church that could do us this essential service. For most of us, exploration will be only the effort to understand as much as is thus certain. And it is immensely rewarding.

The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth"; that accounts for his body. And "He breathed into his face the breath of life.

So many of our troubles flow from a defective use of the intelligence or will or energy we have, that we are in danger of thinking that all our troubles could be cured by a better use of our own powers—

cats are matter, with no spirit to complicate it.

to clarify our notion of mystery: which does not mean a truth that we cannot know anything about, but a truth that we cannot know everything about.

One way to prevent conversation from being boring is to say the wrong thing.

we can never attain a maximum love of God with only a minimum knowledge of God

Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world.

Man is a rational animal. But that does not mean that he is a reasonable animal. It means only that he has reason, and therefore can misuse it. If he had not reason, he could not be unreasonable. But he has, and is.

The theologian can ask far profounder questions because he knows more about God; by that same knowledge he knows that there are depths that he will never know. But to see why one cannot know more is itself a real seeing; there is a way of seeing the darkness which is a kind of light.

All theology consists in finding out what is meant by the words "He is." Let us begin.

To overlook God's presence is not simply to be irreligious: it is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there.

Eternity is not time at all. It is God's total possession of Himself.

The Lord has made all things for Himself (Prov.xvi.4): apart from Himself there existed nothing to make them for. He made them for His own sake, for His own pleasure. But it was His pleasure to bring into existence things that could take pleasure in existence. For our sakes He made us for His sake. To us there is something mysterious in an altruism so total, but something exciting in the mystery. Among all the mysteries, many are greater, but it is hard to think of one more pleasing.

A mental habit has been annihilated, but at least the way towards a sounder mental habit is clear. For although we are made of nothing, we are made into something; and since WHAT WE ARE MADE OF does not account for us, we are forced to a more intense concentration upon THE GOD WE ARE MADE BY.

We cannot use anything intelligently until we know what it is for.

Each of our powers seeks its own outlet, each of our needs its own immediate gratification; we have not the subordination of all our powers to reason and of reason to God which would unify all our striving; every one of us is a civil war. At two points principally the disorder is at its worst, the passions and the imagination.

A Mystery in short is an invitation to the mind. For it means that there is an inexhaustible well of Truth from which the mind may drink and drink again in the certainty that the well will never run dry, that there will always be water for the mind's thirst.

But the plain truth about most of us is that we have let our intellects sink into a condition in which they have neither the muscles nor the energy nor the right habits for the job, nor any effective inclination towards it. We must see how they may be made fit.

truths, I am not at all so sure. Some monstrous shapes flit about the Catholic mind: I remember an educated Catholic

Just as space has parts lying alongside one another, time has parts following one another. The Infinite has no parts, of either (or any other conceivable) sort. Eternity is not time, however much we may try to glorify the concept of time.

It is of the very nature of partial seeing that we cannot see all the reconciliation of the parts we see, because it is only in the whole that they are one, and we do not see the whole. The word we form cannot wholly express God: only the Word He generates can do that. To be irked at this necessary darkness is as though we were irked at not being God.