Sin

Man’s sin is a failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is servant of God.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

To pray
Is to know how to stand still
And to dwell upon a word.

Abraham Joshua Heschel 1907-1972

What do most of us know about the substance of words? Estranged from the soil of the soul, our words do not grow as fruits of insights, but are found as sapless clichés, refuse in the backyard of intelligence. To the man of our age nothing is as familiar and nothing as trite as words… We all live in them, feel in them, think in them, but failing to uphold their independent dignity, to respect their power and weight, they turn waif, elusive – a mouthful of dust…

Abraham Joshua Heschel 1907-1972

Quotes and Snippets

I've realized that my "Exploring the Kingdom - Reflections" blog isn't too interesting for anyone but me. I've decided to use this blog to record quotes and other snippets I find interesting with minimal comment.

America and Catholic Social Teaching

… America’s highly individualistic ethic clashes in various ways with ideas like “common good,” “solidarity,” and Catholic personalism. In Catholic social thinking, the human person is neither an autonomous individual nor a mere fragment of a social mass as in several forms of twentieth-century collectivism. The person, then, exists in a matrix of relationships that is not given much attention in mainstream American thought. Catholic social teaching, with its highly technical and somewhat foreign terminology, has therefore found itself in some tension with mainstream American political discourse, and this tension has given rise to disputes, even among Catholics, about the applicability of Catholic thought in the context of this nation.”

Peter Steinfels & Robert Royal