Quotes about Mystery

People think that what God wills must inevitably take place. This is by no means the case. God wills a great deal of blessing for His people that never comes to them. He wills it most earnestly, but they do not will it, and it cannot come to them. This is the great mystery of man's creation with a free will but also of the renewal of his will in redemption, that God has made the execution of His will dependent on the will of man in many things.

Perseverance in prayer, a perseverance that strengthens the faith of the believer against everything that may seem opposed to the answer, is a real miracle; it is one of the impenetrable mysteries of the life of faith.

A secret in his mouth, is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out.

The principle of biblical inerrancy follows logically from this principle of divine authorship. After all, God cannot lie, and he cannot make mistakes. Since the Bible is divinely inspired, it must be without error in everything that its divine and human authors affirm to be true. This means that biblical inerrancy is a mystery even broader in scope than infallibility, which guarantees for us that the Church will always teach the truth concerning faith and morals.

When God descends to us he, in a certain sense, abases himself and stammers with us, so He allows us to stammer with Him.

They who take it amiss that the world was not sooner created, may as well expostulate with God for not having made innumerable worlds.

Anyone who cannot bear to lay hold of God as he comes down to him will still less soar up to him beyond the clouds.

And, as Augustine expresses it (in Psalm cxliv.), since we are unable to comprehend Him, and are, as it were, overpowered by his greatness, our proper course is to contemplate his works, and

God's purpose remains God's secret, and he alone can justify his deeds among men. So

The essence of God is rather to be adored than inquired into.

For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin's womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.

The reason for God's keeping some for himself and rejecting others is to be sought nowhere but in God himself.