The Value of Reticence
Of all the means of evangelization at our disposal, perhaps the least talked about is . . . not talking.
Of all the means of evangelization at our disposal, perhaps the least talked about is . . . not talking.
We know how it feels, finding yourself suddenly appointed the spokesman for the Catholic Church while you're standing at a photocopier, swigging a drink at the bar, or when a group of folks suddenly freezes, and all eyes fix on you.
We must grow in wisdom, as Christ did, by deepening our understanding of the sacramental life through the very substance of every day.
By their relentless practicality the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius shove the searcher into the center of the Gospel and leave him alone there with Christ, with the triune God who speaks to him.
The object which Christ contemplates, which he loves in the Church, is not human nature simply, but human nature illuminated and renovated by his own supernatural power.
We are far too apt to look upon forgiveness as a merely negative thing.
On this feast of Saint Benedict, the sixth-century monk whose spiritual sons saved civilization, it is a small sadness to realize that we may have read the last of the beautiful theology and biblical wisdom of the man who took his name, Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI.
Crosses are the great means which God employs to destroy self-love in us and to increase and purify his love within us.