The reason why the Christians in this day are at such a loss as to some things is that they are contented with what comes from man's mouth, without searching and kneeling before God to know of Him the truth of things.
You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule.
Children are meant to understand compassion and comfort because they have received compassion and comfort - and this should be in the family setting. A family should be a place where comfort is experienced and understood, so that the people are prepared to give comfort to others.
I am a futility. The life of prayer begins with that. And God is not a comfort, to be offered like Kleenex. God is a poisoned sea, with broken syringes washing up on the beach. God is shopping malls stretching to the horizon and warplanes in the sky. God is a flat tire in a rainstorm and beer cans in the ditch, a bottle shattered on a highway and the taste of gunmetal in your mouth.
It is the black work of an ungodly man or an atheist, that God is not in all his thoughts. What comfort can be had in the being of God without thinking of him with reverence and delight? A God forgotten is as good as no God to us.
And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some.
Leonardo da Vinci did not take received wisdom - whether from ancient classical thinkers or medieval scholars or from the Bible - without questioning it. And this was the beginning of the scientific method. This is another lesson for our time: that when we have evidence that contradicts a certain belief, we should be willing to change it. I think this made Leonardo, in some ways, a person who better understood the beauty of God's creation than a person who just takes all received wisdom from the Bible on faith.
Let no one believe that he has received the divine kiss, if he knows the truth without loving it or loves it without understanding it. But blessed is that kiss whereby not only is God recognized but also the Father is loved; for there is never full knowledge without perfect love.
Several of us linguists at that time would record our own kids, just to get some data. There was some literature on it then, but no day-by-day, blow-by-blow examples. I recorded all my children over the years in some shape or form. It's what linguists do. You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.
Thousands do benefit from love, support and comfort in their final chapter: I watched my dad slip away without pain as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen tracks played in a warm Marie Curie hospice, surrounded by doting nurses and his family.
If we do not do this our churches will lighthouses without light, wells without water, dumb witnesses, sleeping watchmen, silent trumpets, messengers without tidings, a comfort for infidels, jubilant joys to the devil, and an offense to God.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.
I do not doubt that all those who have received Baptism anywhere and from whomever do have Baptism, as long as it was consecrated with the words of the Gospel and they received it without pretence on their part and with some degree of faith. However, it would not avail them for their spiritual salvation if they were lacking in that charity by which they might be implanted in the Catholic Church.
I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy.
For God to be holy does not just mean He is without error. It means He is without equal. May it not be said of any one of us that there is not respect for the author of the universe. He is sovereign over all nature, over all nations and over every single one of our lives.
My guilty pleasure is vanilla cupcakes! I love cupcakes! I love cupcakes. When it's really bad, it's 12 per day. I've fallen asleep with cupcake in my mouth, like, frosting all over my mouth. More than - several times.