It is clear that our hearts are broken in places, and are hard in others. A lot of the “treasure” in our heart was not put there by ourselves, but was “sown by an enemy.” But knowing that only means I am the more responsible with what I do with it.
Fr. Stephen Freeman
truisms
I have been told a number of times, “I can worship God more easily on a walk in the woods than in Church.” In my snappier moods I have been known to counter with, “That seems very odd that you should encounter God in the woods since He had an appointment to meet you last Sunday in Church at 10.
Fr Stephen Freeman
The virtues, alone, are not enough. If you are brave, so, in their way, the fallen angels are brave. If you speak well, Satan spoke well enough to deliver a third of the sons of God to their damnation. When our virtues are unmoored from Christ -- or, if we do not know or acknowledge Christ or the Father, from that natural law that shines its light upon the mind of every man, until by his own corruption he extinguishes it -- then our virtues do not counterbalance our vice. They give it ammunition. We can then, if we persist (and that poet was nothing if not persistent) become brave, or eloquent, or even self-denying, in the service of a consuming wickedness. ....< >.....But even if we do not possess the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, there is one virtue, treading the border between the human and the divine, that should keep us honest. Humility reminds us that we do not create the good; we submit to it. Humility also reminds us that, since Nature endows each of us with at best a modest intellect, which can be improved but also vitiated by education, we had better not trade on our own stock but instead bank upon the wisdom of our collective forebears, a wisdom encapsulated in tradition.
Joel Tuininga
Truth or Vanity