WORDS TO THE WHYS

The truth will make you odd. Flannery O’Connor

Quotes for a Monday in Trinitytide

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Trillium ovatum | Pacific or Western Trillium

The Trinity is the answer to the questions of Plato. If there is only one God, what does He think about? He thinks an eternal thought: His eternal Word, or Son. If there is only one God, whom does he love? He loves His Son, and that mutual love is the Holy Spirit. The great philosopher was fumbling about for the mystery of the Trinity, for his noble mind seemed in some small way to suspect that an infinite being must have relations of thought and love. But it was not until the Word became Incarnate that man knew the secret of those relations and the inner life of God, for it was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who revealed to us the inmost life of God. - Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married

The "name" of the Most Holy Trinity is in a certain way impressed upon everything that exists, because everything that exists, down to the least particle, is a being in relation, and thus God-relation shines forth, ultimately creative Love shines forth. All comes from love, tends toward love, and is moved by love, naturally, according to different grades of consciousness and freedom... The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: only love makes us happy, because we live in relation, and we live to love and be loved. - Pope Benedict XVI

The Christian response is contained in these two fundamental dogmas: that of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation. In the trinitarian dogma God is one, good, true, and beautiful because he is essentially Love, and Love supposes the one, the other, and their unity. - Hans Urs von Balthasar

The deeper truth is that reform, if it is real reform, is an exercise of love. Prophecy, if it is real prophecy, is an exercise of love. Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah employed such harsh language in criticizing the children of Israel precisely because they thought more of the people than the people thought of themselves. The prophets were in love with, were possessed by, a vision of the dignity and destiny of those they addressed. The outrageousness of sin and failure was in direct proportion to the greatness of God's intent for his people. Prophecy was always an exercise of love, never of contempt, for those to whom the prophet addressed his criticism. - Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America

Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the Apostolic Faith. - Hans Urs von Balthasar

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