Atheism
“God’s Law, promulgated by Moses, contains the major principles, the absolutely necessary conditions for the spiritual survival of men. All the prohibitions that it contains are a safeguard to prevent man from falling over the brink of evil into the abyss of sin and death.”
“This relentless campaign against life is a new, definitive stage in the relentless campaign against God’s plan. Nevertheless, in all my travels, I notice a reawakening of consciences.”
“The atheistic orientation of a life is almost always a decision by the will. Man no longer wishes to reflect on his relationship to God because he himself intends to become God …. strategy of appropriating God instead of adoring him.”
“The individualist universe comes to be centered solely on the person, who no longer tolerates any constraint…. Atheism is thus a decision to ignore reason…. Material well-being and immediate satisfaction become the only reason for living.”
“…atheism always leads to the same consequences. Man is treated as an object, cut off from his spiritual roots and blinded by the artificial lights of material goods or achievements….all atheism seeks to change the very nature of man….”
“Reversing the movement of insidious atheism that has carried off practically all of Western Europe, Orthodoxy has allowed the Russian nation to avoid the traps, so that now it is a country that makes significant room for God and Faith.”
“…Christians allow themselves to be influenced by this pervasive individualism…. Many expect, as something normal, that God should pour out his mercy on them while they remain in sin….”
“…the very fact of not believing is already the declaration of a repressed faith.”
Humanism and Philosophy
“…the moment God is no longer creator, man is debased…. Humanism that tries to ignore Christ empties out its own substance and becomes merely materialism…. Without a true humanism founded on Christ, man no longer understands himself.”
“The encounter between Greek philosophy and Christianity was a unique moment in the history of mankind…. Greek philosophy receives Christian baptism and is purified so as to become within the Church the servant of theology.”
“Greek wisdom cannot explain evil or suffering or redemption or hope. Nevertheless, this thirst for divine friendship is still a marvelous attempt and a preparation for revelation, for the Logos.”
Is democracy an invention of Christianity?
“Indisputably…. But if democracy excludes religion, explicitly or not, it is no longer a good for the people, hence the constitutional State no longer is, either…. As always, the eclipse of what is divine means the debasement of what is human.”
“We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”
“Truth and love coincide in Christ…. Today relativism appears to be the philosophical basis for Western democracies that refuse to consider that Christian truth might be superior to any other.”
“…relativism drives man to create his own religion, populated by multiple more or less pathetic deities, which are born and die in response to impulses, in a world that is somewhat reminiscent of the ancient pagan religions. In this totalitarian yoke, the Church loses her absolute character, her dogmas, her teaching, and her sacraments are practically prohibited or else diminished in their rigor and their demands. The Bride of the Son of God is marginalized, in a disdain that engenders hatred of Christianity, because it is a permanent obstacle.”
“Relativism is a widespread evil … it arbitrarily serves as a sort of charter for a way of communal life. Relativism attempts to complete the process of the social disappearance of God. It guides mankind with an attractive logic that proves to be a perverse totalitarian system. The Church continues today the battle of Benedict XVI against the liquidation of God. And this is a battle on behalf of mankind.”
Living in a secularized world
“Liberty without truth is deceitful; the absence of a moral connection between liberty and truth can only produce a form of anarchy.”
“Baptized persons have the duty to believe not only with their heart but also with their intellect.”
“A Godless society, which considers any spiritual questions a dead letter, masks the emptiness of its materialism by killing time so as better to forget eternity…. the more man forgets God, the more he observes himself…. Then, to delude himself, he puts on his make-up…. Without God, man builds his hell on earth.”
“According to the philosopher, since men could not remedy death, misery, and ignorance, they decided that it would make them happy not to think about them at all…. the search for different pleasures is connected to the abandonment of God…. Today we are confronted with one of the last stages of the civilization of diversion.”
“The search for power without God generates a greater susceptibility to the thirst for liberating illusions…. Christians will never succeed in overcoming the challenges of the world by appealing to political tools, human rights or respect for religious liberty….The violence against Christians is not just physical; it is also political, ideological, and cultural….”
“Now the refinements of evil are becoming ever more insidious. A man who falls asleep for a moment must take care not to fall into a trap that is so pleasant that it is all the more formidable.”
Faith, Hope, Love, Prayer
“Hope is nothing other than Christian optimism…. Faith is the foundation of hope…. A distinguishing mark of Christians [is] … they have a future … their life will not end in emptiness.”
“Without prayer there is no true joy…. Prayer is the source of our joy and serenity because it unites us to God, who is our strength…. Someone who relies on his own strength is always saddened when it declines…. a believer cannot be in sorrow because his joy comes from God alone. But spiritual joy depends on the Cross.”
“If God truly possesses us, if Christ abides in us, joy always returns.”
“…mercy demands truth, justice, and repentance. In God, mercy will become ‘forgiveness.'”
“God… casts his Heart upon our misery…. God rejoices to forgive us.”
“True prayer leads to a sort of disappearance of our personal clutter.”
“…for a long time I have thought that prayer can take shape only in the night. In darkness, we are illumined only by God…. it is important to learn to pray in the middle of the night, while all creation is seeking sleep. Prayer at night plunges us back into the darkness of the death of Jesus Christ…. Through prayer we resemble Christ, who loved to be recollected all night.”
“… contemplation is actually an intimate conversation with God in silence and solitude…. Christ’s sacred humanity is always the way by which to arrive at God: to allow him to speak in the silence, before the Blessed Sacrament, looking at a crucifix ….”
“The man who contemplates and encounters his Creator will never be the same again … part of his soul has already arrived in heaven.”
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