“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.”

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.

We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.

God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.

In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner.

Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to each of us.

The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.

The task of pastoral ministry, above all else, is to arrange contingencies for an encounter with the divine.

No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.

Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian’s life.

It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.

Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?

My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.

To give of yourself is much more important than giving a gift you can buy.

Television gives us the gift to see ourselves as we’d like to be seen.

They… who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.

How many gifts and graces You have given me! How many favors You have fed me from your hand! I look for your love in all directions, then suddenly its blessing burns in me.

Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.

O the eye’s light is a noble gift of Heaven! All beings live from light, each fair created thing; the very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.

I believe it is my duty to share the gifts I have learned. How dare I have the tools for finding serenity and not share them with the world?