Only Wounded Soldiers Serve

"Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love's service only wounded soldiers can serve. Physician, draw back."

Thornton Wilder, The Angel that Troubled the Waters

The Sword of Love

The Cherub was stationed at the gate of the earthly paradise with the flaming sword to teach us that no one will enter the heavenly paradise who is not pierced with the sword of love.

~ St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God

Purpose

"If we stood face to face with the light streaming from the face of God right now, we would be blinded, dazzled, and squashed. 'No man can see my face and live.'

God is like the sun; the most ecstatic joy available in our present experience is like a sunbeam. If we were able to run up the sunbeam into the sun, we would be volatized.

Our business here is a process of thickening, becoming more real, learning to endure more light."

~ Peter Kreeft, Heaven, the Heart's Deepest Longing

Mystery

We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it ... every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Ask Him

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths.

~ Jeremiah 6:16