Quotes about Reflection

Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.

To deal with the word of Jesus otherwise than by doing it is to give him the lie. It is to deny the Sermon on the Mount and to say No to his word...That is why as soon as the hurricane begins we lose the word, and find that we have never really believed it. The word we had was not Christ's, but a word we had wrested from him and made our own by reflecting on it instead of doing it.

We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune.

I wonder why it is that we find some days so much more oppressive than others, for no apparent reason. Is it growing pains - or spiritual trial? Once they're over, the world looks quite a different place again.

There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world.

Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology.

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open. Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...

Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is.

For we cannot speak of the beginning; where the beginning begins our thinking stops, it comes to an end.

Every day we must turn again to God's acts of salvation, so that we can again move forward…. Faith and obedience live on remembrance and repetition. Remembrance becomes the power of the present because of the living God who once acted for me and who reminds me of that today.

Ascension joy—inwardly we must become very quiet to hear the soft sound of this phrase at all. Joy lives in its quietness and incomprehensibility. This joy is in fact incomprehensible, for the comprehensible never makes for joy.

The idea that we could have avoided many of life's difficulties if we had taken things more cautiously is too foolish to be entertained for a moment. As I look back on your past I am so convinced that what has happened hitherto has been right, that I feel that what is happening now is right too. To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human.