Quotes about Struggle

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don't always feel like I'm a success. That's right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I've just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I'm trying to communicate with.

Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars through difficulties.)

No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.

The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: "I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.

she was tempted to give up on God because she couldn't reconcile her doctrine with her deity. She

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.

Augustine of Hippo: "In affliction, then, we do not know what it is right to pray for. Because affliction is difficult, troublesome and against the grain for us, weak as we are, we do what every human would do. We pray that it may be taken away from us. However, if he does not take it away, we must not imagine that he has forgotten us. In this way, power shines forth more perfectly in weakness.

Sometimes I was incredibly frustrated and angry, wondering how these extremes could exist in the same world, let alone in the same church. Sometimes I just got cynical. That was the easiest thing to feel, as cynicism takes very little energy.

We must take a plunge into the darkness before we can fully appreciate the light.

To cling to the gift of life we've been given and scramble to protect our own interests is to cooperate in a culture of death that threatens to destroy us all.