We pray to obey God, not to ‘play God’. We pray, not to change God’s mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to ‘let...

Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, “I am.” We are ontological oxymorons.

Prayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since...

Feelings are wonderful decorations, but they are not a foundation to build on.

The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.

When we pray, instead of trying to produce love in our souls toward God, we should be basking in God’s love for us. How foolish to stay indoors in the cold, dark little room off...

America does not know the difference between money and sex. It treats sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money...

One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility.

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.

You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God’s grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.

If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist,...

The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he...

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.

Go back to Socrates: “Know thyself.” For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the...

Brother Lawrence says, in The Practice of the Presence of God, ‘There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only...

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone...

To invoke Jesus’ name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy. The prayer of Jesus’ name actually brings God closer, making him more present. He is always...

God is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of God. Music is a language more profound than words. How often have you heard a great piece of music...

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which...

Prayer is easier than we think. we want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility....

We can’t avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.

It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.

How do we listen to his voice? With the ear of our heart. With love. Love has ears, as love has eyes. Just be there, and love him, and let him love you.” (35). Easier...

Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts.

Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to...

The fires of hell may be made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God’s truth, hated and fled from in vain by those...

Conscience is thus explained only as the voice of God in the soul.

Three reasons God commands us to pray correlate to our three deepest needs, the fundamental needs of the three powers of our soul: prayer gives truth to our mind, goodness to our will, and beauty...

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.

We must pray in order to grow, and we must grow because Infinite Love will not, cannot, settle for less than the greatest joy of which his beloved creature is capable.

If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings,...

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting.

The practice of the presence of God, though we begin it at special times of prayer, is designed to spill out and over and into all times.

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.

Léon Bloy wrote: ‘Life holds only one tragedy: not to have been a saint