Circumstances don't shape us, so much as they reveal us.

God suffers with you!

My prospects for life, though in a measure shaded with uncertainty, hardship and danger, are very animating and bright. My prospects for another life, blessed be God, are still brighter.

A rose does not lose sleep because it was mocked by weeds.

Children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort, man can only propose to diminish, arithmetically, the sufferings of the world.

Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.

Someone really wise once told me that even Christians aren't immune to tragedy. That we can't use this fallen world to gauge our value to God.

Blaise Pascal is usually credited with saying that there is "a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man." That longing will not be eliminated by the Rapture. In fact, it will be heightened by the terror of living in a world of unrestrained evil.

Most of us pass our lives away eating the husks of life. Within them, beneath the rind, is a sweeter fruit than ever we have tasted. How shall we find it unless the rind is peeled away by Wisdom greater than our own, by a Love whose ways are strange and bewildering to us.

Et le Seigneur se pencha, il cueillit doucement la fleur embaumée, il détacha sans effort sa grappe chérie du cep amer de l'exil, la trouvant totalement dorée des feux de l'Amour divin. Quelles

Life is passing, and eternity is drawing near. Soon we shall live the very life of God. After we have been filled at the source of all bitterness, our thirst will be quenched at the very Fountain of all sweetness.

A little longer, and we shall be in our true country, and our childhood's joys—those Sunday evenings, those outpourings of the heart—will be given back to us for ever!