Quotes About Spirituality

The body is the temple of the heart. How shall we reach the sacred image unless we enter the gates?

Neither male nor female language adequately grasps the fullness of the divine reality (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 27; John of Damascus, OF 1.4–8).

Rightly known, God illumines all reality, all human experience, all revelation, and all religion

Christianity does not limit revelation to Christ, but through Christ sees God's revelation as occurring elsewhere and finally, echoing everywhere.

Human reasoning is created by God with a capacity for reaching toward God by thinking, choosing, and speaking.

Human freedom is created by God with a capacity for responsiveness to God.

Human personality is created with the restless yearning for communion with the unseen but present personal God (Augustine, Conf. 1.1).

Human love is created with some capacity, however distorted, to love God and to love creatures through God.

You cannot conclude that God, because Father, is therefore male.

In the Godhead all historical inequalities are finally transcended.

One trains the eye of confession most closely on what is hurting. If sin is present it will be aching. Confession begins where the raw anguish of conscience is rubbing against the primordial awareness of God's holiness.

A delicate balance is required: keep the penitent tautly close to the point of recognizing sin, and then allow the relief of that pressure to flow through forgiveness. Confession increases this tautness, only to clear the path for release.

In college I lost the capacity for heartfelt, extemporized prayer. I would have considered it gauche to pray spontaneously aloud with other college sophomores. I had also left behind my love the church's Scriptures, prayers, and especially its hymns, but I always knew they would be there if I went back to find them.

God's way of being alive is distinguishable from other forms of life. Plants, animals, and humans enjoy life at different scales of consciousness, movement, and self-determination. But in all plants, animals, and humans, bodily life ends in death. From the moment of conception, the processes of decay and death are at work in our bodies. Not so in God's life. God's life is eternally alive. God's life is not only without end but without beginning.

Into your hands, 0 Lord, we commit ourselves this day. Give to each one of us a watchful, a humble, and a diligent spirit that we may seek in all things to know your will, and when we know it may perform it perfectly and gladly, to the honor and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Gelasian Sacramentary

Just as God stepped out of his nature to become a partaker of our humanity, so we are called to step out of our nature to become partakers of his divinity" (Hilary of Arles, Intro. Comm. on 2 Pet. 1.4).

Rome fell because of inner weakness, either social or spiritual; or Rome fell because of outer pressure—the barbarian hordes. What we can say with confidence is that Rome fell gradually and that Romans for many decades scarcely noticed what was happening.

This was why sudden death was so feared: it did not give you time to put your spiritual house in order. You might have meant to repent but hadn't quite got round to it. Too bad. Down you go. All the way.

There is but one temple in this Universe: The Body. We speak to God whenever we lay our hands upon it.

The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

Wonder is the basis of worship.