#religion

Mary had been chosen, “favored” by God. But what a strange blessing. It brought with it none of the ideals or goals that so consume our daily striving. Today many assume that those whom God favors will enjoy the things we equate with a good life: social standing, wealth and good health. Yet Mary, God’s favored one, was blessed with having a child out of wedlock who would later be executed as a criminal. Acceptability, prosperity, and comfort have never been the essence of God’s blessing ↗

— R. Alan Culpepper

#life

A priest's life is spent between question and answer-- or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life. ↗

— Naguib Mahfouz

#religion #life

My mother was a good Catholic -- she went to mass twice a week at St. Mary's in Richmond, but my father was an Orthodox Eclectic. ↗

— Sue Monk Kidd

#life

It is no sign of benediction to have been obsessed with the lives of saints, for it is an obsession intertwined with a taste for maladies and hunger for depravities. One only troubles oneself with saints because one has been disappointed by the paradoxes of earthly life; one therefore searches out other paradoxes, more outlandish in guise, redolent of unknown truths, unknown perfumes... ↗

— Emil Cioran

#saints #life

We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us. ↗

— Os Guinness

#life #mystery #os-guinness #religion #the-call

We keep hoping in God while reality keeps knocking at our door. ↗

— Shina Charles Memud

#god #life #reality #religion #life

From the Renaissance until today, Christianity, and also to some extent Judaism, in the West have had to carry out a constant battle against ideologies, philosophies, institutions and practices which are secular in nature and which challenge the authority of religion and in fact its very validity and legitimacy. These challenges to religion have varied from political ideas which are based on secularism to the denial of the religious foundation of morality and the philosophical denial of the reality of God and of the after life or of revelation and sacred scripture. The history of the West has been marked during the last few centuries by a constant battle between the forces of religion and secularism and in fact the gaining of the upper hand by secularism and consequently the denial of the reality of religion and its pertinence to various domains of life. ↗

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

#secularism #western-civilization #life

Be your own master, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. ↗

— Marcus Aurelius

#philosophy #philosophy-of-life #life

Each individual is born into life as a creation from the source, and as an inhabitant and visitor to this planet. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#life-and-living #religion-spirituality #life

This is exactly why the preservation of the world is not a priority for the true Christian. We are not of this world. Our love is for God, and our hope lies in Him, not the world. So the "social justice" agenda is not the Christian agenda, nor can it ever be for the Church. ↗

— Curtis A. Chamberlain

#faith