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802949e
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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 all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.
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prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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440fc5f
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Catholics have seldom had the difficulties and embarrassments many Protestants have had about creation vs. evolution. Ever since Augustine, they have interpreted Genesis' "days" non-literally."
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Peter Kreeft |
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d761d27
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But that is all prayer requires: faith, hope, and love. Great holiness, or piety, or sanctity are not required. Prayer is a road holiness.
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god
holiness
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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33c4f18
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The person who is committing the sin of sloth may be doing nothing visible that is wrong. Yet he is rejecting the presence of God, refusing the joy of love.
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Peter Kreeft |
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ff7458c
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Brother Lawrence says, in , 'There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it' (Letter 5). No one who has ever tried it has ever given it a lesser rating than that. For even though our prayer-contact with God may be almost infinitely poor, the God we thus contact is infinitely rich! Therefore, 'we are to be pitied w..
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god
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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d7afc11
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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 said than done. "What will happen then? What will we hear? Let God take care of that. Seek only him, do not use him as a means to seek any other end. He is not your Santa, he is your Savior. I cannot tell you what he will give you, except for one thing: he will give you himsel..
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god
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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4ea07fb
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In fact, I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.
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Peter Kreeft |
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4d8e020
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Only is a bird doesn't swim in the ocean but flies in the air can it enter the ocean from above; only because God is not temporal can he enter into time.
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temporal
time
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Peter Kreeft |
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32dcda4
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God makes it easy to begin: just do it! God also makes it easy to progress in prayer, for he rewards our efforts with peace and joy. And he makes it easiest of all at the end, for it gradually becomes more natural and delightful.
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faith
god
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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c05c43e
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That freedom is lost in Hell.
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Peter Kreeft |
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e21b883
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Morality means choice. Choice means priorities. Priorities mean a hierarchy. A hierarchy means something at the top, a standard. That is the greatest good. If you have no greatest good, you have no hierarchy, you have no priorities. If you have no priorities, you cannot make intelligent choices. If you cannot make intelligent moral choices, you have no morality. You can still guide your life by your feelings or by social fashions, but that..
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decision-making
freedom
morality
philosophy
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Peter Kreeft |
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bafb393
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You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.
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faith
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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59d4959
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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 us). These are the tow reasons we hid from other people, even our friends, even our parents, and the tow reasons we should never hide from God.
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faith
god
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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7fb86cc
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As society grows, it knows more and more about less and less. It knows more about the little things and less about the big things. It knows more about everything and less about Everything.
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Peter Kreeft |
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c6f8535
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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 we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives.
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faith
god
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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7340199
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One of the reasons lust is bad (not the only reason) is that it makes you stupid. Like any addiction, it blinds your vision to everything else and focuses it on the one thing that is the object of your addiction.
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Peter Kreeft |
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e9da5ec
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St. Thomas would have agreed with Leon Bloy, who often wrote that in the end there is only one tragedy in life: not to have been a saint.
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Peter Kreeft |
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bb7ccc5
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You see, passion alone is a blind power. It's fire without light. It just ignites whatever it touches, good or evil, truth or lies, unselfishness or selfishness, love or lust.
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Peter Kreeft |
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ee7cece
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when the soul no longer conforms to the will of God, the body no longer conforms to the will of the soul.
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Peter Kreeft |
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4bd1315
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Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil.
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Peter Kreeft |
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ad96e9d
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Psychology can make us feel good, but religion can make us be good.
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Peter Kreeft |
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a633837
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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 us).
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Peter Kreeft |
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62a0c1c
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If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with you..
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jesus
jesus-christ
jesus-shock
religion-and-philoshophy
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Peter Kreeft |
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4a4544c
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God loves us more than we love Him.
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Peter Kreeft |
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727d664
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It is much easier to fail to love your parents than to fail to love your children. That is why there is a commandment that commands love and respect to parents, but not to children. In an age of abortion, there ought to be an eleventh commandment against neglecting, harming, abusing, or even murdering your own children.
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Peter Kreeft |
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d84b19a
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Third, it can mean deep, wondering reverence, or "awe" at something immeasurably superior. This is an emotion that is much rarer today than ever before in the history of the world, probably because modern life is so full of scientific knowledge and technological power over nature that we live in a dream of arrogant cleverness and a cocoon of predictable comforts."
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Peter Kreeft |
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b398692
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Live a life of love, especially the love of God, and observe the joy of it. Live a life of lovelessness and observe the joylessness of it.
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Peter Kreeft |
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22a0fc9
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F]or a thing to be evil, one single defect suffices, whereas for it to be good . . . it is not enough for it to be good in one point only, it must be good in every respect. . . .
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Peter Kreeft |
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c7817db
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He offers total mercy and forgiveness to all who will accept it by trusting Him and repenting of their sins, but He does not, and cannot, give forgiveness to those who will not receive His gift. Gifts are freely given and freely received. Heaven cannot be forced on a creature with free will.
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Peter Kreeft |
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b35f86b
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When you're in a burning building looking out of the twentieth story window down to the street and all you see is clouds of billowing smoke, you have to choose to believe the firemen below who tell you they have a safety net and it's safe to jump. When the clouds of smoke disappear, you don't have to believe any more: you see it. In this world, it's a leap in the dark; in the next world, it's a leap in the light.
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Peter Kreeft |
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e711cd8
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There are only two persons you can never, ever escape, not for one moment, either in time or in eternity: God and yourself.
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Peter Kreeft |
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95c03b3
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Honesty is a moral virtue, a matter of the will. Honesty means willing the truth with the whole of your heart. This demands sacrifice. We have little hope of attaining honesty unless we realize how demanding it is. It demands sacrifice of self-will, self-image, the desire to win, and the comfort of being right. The "honesty" often praised today is usually only emotional honesty with others, not intellectual honesty with one's self; only "le..
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morality
philosophy
truth
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Peter Kreeft |
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d3a6bc2
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No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior.
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Peter Kreeft |
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b1f10ce
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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 present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayers a difference; 'prayer changes things.' It may or may not change our ..
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christian
faith
jesus
power-of-his-name
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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d3346bf
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High and holy ambition--to be a saint--is not opposed to holy humility--total reliance on God's grace. Exactly the opposite. Ambition without humility is ambition that fails. It is pride, which goes before a fall (Prov 16:18). Humility without ambition is false humility.
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grace
humilty
prayer
trust-in-god
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Peter Kreeft |
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61aaeee
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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.
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god
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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5e4ec83
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It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, "Like a human body.")"
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Peter Kreeft |
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1e59e01
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The literary establishment in England was stunned, shocked, and scandalized by an event of millennial significance when a major bookstore chain innocently polled English-speaking readers, asking them to choose the greatest book of the twentieth century. By a wide margin The Lord of the Rings won. Three times the poll was broadened: to a worldwide readership, into cyberspace via Amazon.com, and even to "the greatest book of the millennium". ..
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Peter Kreeft |
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1d8c19a
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Praying anywhere" can easily become "praying nowhere", just as "praying anytime" can easily become "praying at no time". Everything in general becomes nothing in particular"."
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particular
prayer
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Peter Kreeft |
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a00b99e
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There is no such thing as an involuntary sin.
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Peter Kreeft |
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377565c
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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 prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints."
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Peter Kreeft |
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7433a71
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So nothing can be ours by right, by nature, or by necessity. But one thing is mine by my free choice: the self I give away in love. This is the thing even God cannot do for me. It really is my choice. God can love, but He cannot compel my free love. If it is compelled, it is not free. If it is free, it is not compelled.
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Peter Kreeft |
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2f01a73
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Truth is unchanging. The principles of morality are unchanging. The human essence is unchanging. Therefore there is no hope of a New Man, Heaven on Earth, Babel Rebuilt, a Brave New World, or Superman.
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Peter Kreeft |
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1ef1f20
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For any act to be morally right, three things are necessary: (1) right act, (2) right motive, and (3) right circumstances. If any one of these factors is not right, the act is wrong.
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Peter Kreeft |