NEWSLETTER INSERTS - ON GOD'S PASSION AND BEAUTY

'Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy ‘shock,’ it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum—it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it ‘reawakens’ him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft.'

Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting With Artists, November 21, 2009

‘Allow Christ to burn in you, even at the cost of sacrifice and renunciation. Do not be afraid that you might lose something and, so to speak, emerge empty handed at the end. Have the courage to apply your talents and gifts for God’s kingdom and to give yourselves – like candlewax – so that the Lord can light up the darkness through you. Dare to be glowing saints, in whose eyes and hearts the love of Christ beams and who thus bring light to the world’.

Pope Benedict XVI, 24th September 2011 to German Youth

‘If you lack self-knowledge you will possess neither the fear of God nor humility’.

St Bernard of Clairvaux

‘I myself am his food…I am digested as I am changed; I am assimilated as I am transformed…for if I eat and am not eaten, then he is in me but I am not yet in him’.

St Bernard of Clairvaux

‘Christianity is great because love is great. It burns, yet this is  not a destructive fire  but a fire that makes things bright and pure and free and grand. Being a Christian is daring to entrust oneself to this burning fire’.

Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World. Ignatius Press, 2002,

'I long to see you so totally ablaze with loving fire that you become one with gentle First truth. Truly the soul's being united with and transformed into him is like fire consuming the dampness in logs. Once the logs are heated through and through, the fire burns and changes them into itself, giving them its own color and warmth and power.'

St Catherine of Siena, Letter T137