God’s solution to the problem of evil is his Son Jesus Christ. The Father’s love sent his Son to die for us to defeat the power of evil in human nature: that’s the heart of the Christian story.
In essentials, unity; in inessentials, diversity; in all things, charity.
It also works the other way around: the more you love any person (human or divine), the more you want to know him (or Him) better, and the more you do. And this always causes deep joy.
It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, ans...
It’s like a government agency that really works.
Love makes more waves than hate. Wicked men will hate and fear you more for loving them than for hating them. They will quickly forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being r...
No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest c...
Other possible means were not lacking on God’s part. One drop of blood—from Christ’s circumcision at the age of eight days—would have been sufficient to purchase all mankind’s salvation. Why then did...
Presumption and despair are opposite deadly sins. We hear a lot about despair, and the need for hope; but what is presumption?
Pure truth is possible, but pure falsehood is not.
Since (1) charity is supernatural, and comes only from the real presence of God in the soul (St. Thomas’ paragraph 3), and since (2) all men, and not only Christians, are capable of charity (as has be...
St. Thomas thus detects a primary source of presumption in seeking genuinely good things, like human happiness on earth, as if we did not need divine grace to attain them; and in the hope that we can...
The Exodus also = salvation; Egypt = sin; Pharoah = Satan; Moses = Christ; the Jews = the Church; the Red Sea = death; the wilderness = Purgatory; the Old Law = the New Law; the gospel; the old Mount...
The difference between a counsel and a commandment is that a commandment implies obligation, whereas a counsel is left to the option of the one to whom it is given.
The idea of resolving conflicts by killing people (which is what war is) is not a just thing, a just idea. In that sense there is no such thing as just war. But to wage a given war may be a just actio...
The medievals loved to say that God wrote two books: nature and Scripture. And since he is the author of both books, and since this Teacher never contradicts himself, these two books never contradict...
The more consciously and freely we choose an evil, the more responsible we are for it and the more guilty we are of it; this is why spiritual sins like pride are greater in guilt than carnal sins.
The quantity comes from the efficient cause but the quality comes from the formal cause.
The soul is the form of the body and the body is the matter of the soul, somewhat as the meaning of a book is its form or soul and the words are its matter or body.
The true philosopher lives his life as a dress rehearsal for death.
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