Quotes from Peter Kreeft

Even God cannot make us love him. "Forced love" is a meaningless impossibility, like "virtuous sin".

Sacraments are that literal, that physical. Salvation is very physical. If the woman with the hemorrhage had touched the hem of St. Peter's garment instead of Christ's, her faith alone would not have healed her until it was joined to His body by her touch.—Unless God had willed to heal her that way, of course. God can work outside his sacraments, and often does. There

not human nature with perfect preternatural gifts such as it was in unfallen Adam.

Unworthy" does not mean "undeserving", for we are all undeserving! It means "incapable of receiving.

since the foe of the human race was vanquished not as by God but as by man, as Pope Leo says

another principle demons use in spiritual warfare: multiple attacks, from many directions at once, or with many different weapons at once.

Christ is the Word of God, the answer of God. All the words of the prophets, philosophers, and poets are echoes of this Word. In

Therefore the prayers we offer in the Mass for the world are far more powerful than the prayers we offer outside the Mass, even if the prayers we offer outside the Mass are the same prayers, and even if there are more of them, and even if they are offered for the same people, or for more people, and even if they are offered with the same faith and devotion on our part, or even with a little more faith and devotion on our part.

Of course we should use all our powers, of mind and will and imagination, but not trust in them, for that is trusting in ourselves.

our primary practical commandment in this life, to love our neighbors: it is not only for their and our good in time, but also preparation for our and their eternal blessedness.

But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.

The quantity comes from the efficient cause but the quality comes from the formal cause.

We are bored with God because our heartsq do not hunger for God, seek God, love God

That's why contraception is wrong by nature: it's a limit, a "Wait! Hold! No! Not quite! We won't give each other Everything")

The finite and the infinite are "incommensurable" (not related even by proper analogy); there is no proportion between them. Precision, or clarity, or exactness, is simply impossible here. All distinctions between

St. Augustine says, "If God is, why is there evil? But if God is not, why is there good?

Our attempts at charity without God, our attempts at charity before faith and hope, all fail because they are based on ourselves and our own false sufficiency and our own righteousness as their foundation and cause. But the charity that comes after faith is God's own work in and through us, and is part of our own salvation.

The only honest reason for anyone ever to believe anything is that it is true, that it is really there.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

the Lutheran alternative to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation which is called consubstantiation, in which the bread and wine are not changed but added to, so that Christ becomes really present along with them but they remain.

All metaphors limp.

T]o scorn the dictate of reason is to scorn the commandment of God (I-II,19,5).

De Caussade makes this matter of duty very simple, too, as he makes everything simple: "We have two duties to fulfill: we must actively seek to carry God's will into effect and passively accept all that his will sends us" (p. 73). That's all. That's it.

Now in giving honor to one's parents or to the gods, as indeed the Philosopher says, it is impossible to repay them measure for measure; but it suffices that man repay as much as he can, for friendship does not demand measure for measure, but what is possible.