jesuits

"Désir de fille est un feu qui dévore; Désir de nonne est cent fois pis encore."

"La douleur est un siècle, et la mort un moment."

"Les maîtres cependant sont des gens bien heureux, Que souvent nous ayons le sens commun pour eux."

"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."

"La faute en est aux dieux qui la firent si bête."

"L'esprit qu’on veut avoir gâte celui qu’on a."

"Trouver la mélancolie Dans le sein de la volupté."

"Un rapport clandestin n'est pas d'un honnête homme; Quand j'accuse quelqu'un, je le dois, et me nomme."

"L'esprit n'est jamais las d'écrire, Lorsque le cœur est de moitié."

"Mais Paris guérit tout et les absents ont tort."

"We should not make people beggars by doling out alms."

"We do not plan for the future but God plans for us. I had chosen to be a Jesuit missionary for the Calcutta Province but providence has brought me as the Bishop of Raiganj, a unknown place with unknown people, culture and language. Though I have left my parents and brothers and sisters, I have hundreds of parents, brothers and sisters among the poorer people of the diocese who really love me and call me "Bishop Baba"."

"Faced with health problems, and especially considering the sense of the religious vocation, I hope in this way to be able to serve God and the people better. What has been done is only thanks to many priests and lay people who have dedicated themselves to the Gospel and are serving faithfully in the Church."

"The longer I stay in education, the more I realize that it is an effective instrument for development and empowerment. I see fewer distinctions than I used to between various kinds of involvement such as social action, pastoral work or education or even work in an administrative set up, as I am now in. I find my work very priestly. I don't have to jump from one sector (religious) to the other (secular) as the distinction between the two gets thinner. Education for me is spiritual involvement."

"Even in the Church of Turkey there is room for everyone, and I will be one of them all. I will try to serve everyone. In Turkey the Church is small but rich in cultures, languages, colours and now has a Turkish bishop who will try to keep all these elements together."

"Out of habit, we go to church, keep our tradition, pray. We need someone to wake us from the lukewarmness. God is always coming towards us, and especially in Advent, he saves us from the cage of tiredness and fatigue and invigorates us."

"A social body which lives essentially upon the gifts which it shouldn't collect itself - here, the priestly body - loses the sense of reality: money is no longer the fruit of work, it becomes an abstract value. When there is no more money, one believes that there still is more. To live like this upon gifts does not favor the maturity of comportments."

"We need philosophers! Working together we can solve all the country's problems."

"India has not changed much in the course of ages. Invasions have taken place, wars have been waged in her vast plains, new nations and races have conquered the land and ruled over it, foreign civilizations have brought new notions and new ideals; but everybody and everything has been remodeled and reshaped and recast by the influence of the Indian nation and its ancient civilization. The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria have been blotted out from the map of the world. But that of India, the first lights of which have been discovered in modern times along the banks of the Indus, is still alive ...."

"The fact is that, when he states, usually in some obscure venue, his adherence to orthodox positions, he is never reported in the world media. The media understand that they influence by image and repetition. Everything the Pope says that can be interpreted in terms of accepting these aberrations is broadcast around the world. Everything he says to deny this view goes largely unreported. Whether the Pope realizes that he is being manipulated here I would not venture to say."

"In the end, I suspect, the "subjective" Church is judged by the standards of the objective Church. Why else would the Lord have bothered to establish an institution whose principal purpose was to lead us to eternal life? It does this by telling us to keep the commandments, seek repentance when we violate them. We are given enough grace to see the difference between what is good and what is evil."

"From a Christian perspective, God is not a "thing", an object that exists like the desk I am sitting at exists, but a person with whom I am in a vital relationship. "Knowing" is not of the same order as knowing an electron, a chromosome or a galaxy: this presupposes a theoretical model and objective experimental verification. Proving the existence of the atom is one thing, but the same procedure cannot be used for the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. The relationship I form with him is about freedom."

"Journalist: What is the difference between a "great watchmaker" god and the God of Jesus Christ? The "great watchmaker" refers to the poetry of Voltaire: it is based on the idea that the world is a clock, that is, a mechanical construction. The model is the vision of Newton and the founders of modern science, such as Descartes. It is known that Pascal was critical of this God "of philosophers and wise men". The God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ presents another "profile", if we can put it that way. Its power manifests itself in its opposite, as Saint Paul of Tarsus vigorously underlined. This shows us the divine creative action in a very different way than according to the model of the manufacture of a machine."

"We must understand the religious nature of Islamic expansion and the methods used to achieve it. By trying to abstract these motivation from the soul of this particular religion, which is, on this score, unlike most others, only makes it impossible to describe what in fact is going on in the mind of the adversary that is Islam. Wars are first fought in minds—and this is a war."

"Not all advice on helping the poor works, so there is a real question of morality, politics, and economics involved here. "Identifying" with the poor is not enough and may well be harmful if ineffective or bad advice is given. We will not help the poor or anyone else, unless we love them. But just because we love someone, it does not follow that how we show this love is a feasible way to help the poor."

"Journalist: According to you, the term "proof" does not apply to God. You prefer the term "sign". Why? God is not an entity of the same order as an atom or a galaxy. The existence of the atom is corroborated by theoretical schemes and experimental evidence. Almost the entire scientific community recognizes its existence. God, at least from my Christian point of view, is not a matter of demonstration. He is a personal God with whom we can establish a relationship. This is an act of faith and freedom. The word "proof" does not apply to the existence of God, because proof is a matter of logical reasoning, not of personal choice. When faced with a mathematical proof, we do not have the freedom to accept or reject the result. Even in physics, where there is no absolute certainty, scientists reach situations of consensus. The theory of general relativity, for example, is accepted by almost all scientists. But this is far from the case with the existence of God! A sign, however, requires interpretation. And interpretation refers to the freedom of the interpreter. If we have a pleasant encounter on the street, we can see it as a sign of God's benevolence or simply as a result of chance. It is a question of freedom of interpretation. No demonstration can conclude that we should have met that person on that day and at that time. The believer can be free to find signs of divine action in the structure of the universe. Isn't it a sign of something that the universe is so coherent? There is room for debate here. But this is not proof."

"The word "proof" is often understood in the strong sense of "rigorous demonstration that leaves no room for interpretation." Admitting the conclusion of a mathematical theorem does not commit freedom. It can be used in a weaker sense, but I prefer to speak of "signs", as in the Gospel according to John. They are, if you like, "clues". That an unexpected event spurs me to give thanks to God poses no difficulty to me, even if other people can see the result of chance in it. The sign presupposes the commitment of a freedom."

"Television has made it clear that my neighbour has no boundaries. Even in the Gospel, the neighbour in the parable of the Good Samaritan transcends boundaries, but television has made this clear to us..."

"Gianna Beretta Molla was a precious witness of conjugal and family spirituality, an authentic path of holiness."

"Halloween is a type of celebration that is foreign to our tradition but has immense value and should be continued. The cult of the dead is part of our history: it is a time when hope for eternity is born. It is a time when the Lord makes us understand that life is more than just this earthly existence."

"Christ's resurrection is not a miracle. The God who through the Son assumed human nature, after his death on the cross reassumes his divine and immortal nature."

"Corriere della Sera reader: "I am an atheist, but I see beauty all around me." Cardinal Martini: "I am Catholic and you are an atheist, but ultimately we are united by the same wonder at creation.""

"The Bible speaks of God's infinite greatness, even of His immeasurability, of the fact that God is immensely greater than our hearts, our beings, our spirits. And so it would come as no surprise if data were to emerge about other planets being inhabited by other people; this would not affect the message of the Bible in any way."

"I personally believe that God created us man and woman and that therefore traditional moral doctrine has good reasons on this point. Of course, I am prepared to admit that in some cases good faith, lived experience, contracted habits, the unconscious and probably even a certain native inclination may lead one to choose for oneself a type of life with a same-sex partner. In today's world, such behaviour can therefore be neither demonised nor ostracised."

"Greater familiarity of European men and women with the Sacred Scriptures leads towards that experience of burning fire in the heart which was experienced by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The Bible read and prayed, in particular by young people, is the book of the future for the European continent."

"I am also prepared to admit the value of an enduring friendship and faithfulness between two persons of the same sex. Friendship has always been held in great honour in the ancient world, perhaps more so than today, even though it was mostly understood in the context of that transcending of the purely physical sphere I mentioned above, to be a union of minds and hearts."

"I believe that each of us has a non-believer and a believer in us, who talk to each other inside, questioning each other, constantly sending pointed and disturbing questions back to each other. The non-believer in me disquiets the believer in me and vice versa."

"Often the language used to talk about God is stunted and feeble, sometimes awkward, sometimes generic; one easily divides into verticalists and horizontalists, traditionalists and progressives, one makes judgements that, in the light of the Gospel, are at least inadequate."

"(About Saint Ignatius of Loyola) He said it himself, he sinned long and hard, to quote Luther; his conversion was total, his expiation very long, accompanied by a love of life and works, including the foundation of a Company that after 400 years is still one of the pillars of our Church."

"A drop of the divine is in every man. We are the dissimilar leaves of a single tree. It is not for me to distinguish the better leaves. Christ said: do not judge."

"A voice like Pope Francis's, and before that the voice that was Cardinal Martini's in Milan, manages to touch chords that exist but that the everyday fails to prompt. Bergoglio's attention to the world of non-believers, for example, was the global dimension of something we had already seen with Martini and his chair of non-believers, that experiment in the Church that aroused much controversy from a part of the clergy and the faithful. It was an occasion, the one proposed by the cardinal of Milan, that was received with more attention precisely by the secular world than by the Church. With Pope Francis the same thing happened."

"Speaking of Jesus accompanies his actions and interprets them: the lordship of God is demonstrated through works and illustrated through words. [...] to authentically proclaim the Gospel it is necessary to some extent to veil it."

"Jesus' parable retains all its enigmatic charge, it leaves the listener with the task of understanding it, it challenges him and forces him to question himself, it involves him in the first person and engages him in the search for meaning. [...] the parables are an act of courtesy, of respect for human freedom, of condescension, almost of tenderness."

"The rhythms of the knowledge that comes from faith are slow. That is why revelation must also be hidden, veiled. Man's freedom is unable to bear the full weight of God's revelation. Thus the parables spring from the heart of Jesus urgency of the gospel; they are spontaneous, not artificial, they spring from life itself. The parables are, in this perspective, one of the most beautiful fruits of the mystery of the Incarnation, the frontier to which language is pushed by the Son of God, so that it may be adapted to communicate the mystery of the Kingdom in respect to the concrete situation of man."

"Journalist: Does the devil exist? Arturo Sosa: In several ways. You have to understand the cultural elements to refer to this character. In the language of Saint Ignatius it is the evil spirit that leads you to do things that go against the spirit of God. It exists as evil personified in different structures but not in people, because it is not a person, it is a way of carrying out evil. He is not a person like a human person is. It is a way of evil being present in human life. Good and evil are in constant struggle in human consciousness, and we have ways of indicating them. We recognize God as good, entirely good. Symbols are part of reality, and the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality."

"At his birth Muhammad had received the name Qutham, but since the Book of Allah had given him the name Ahmad and Muhammad, the Tradition, with a slightly apologetic ulterior motive, wants to hear of no other."

"We pray and we hope peace will be restored. It is necessary to build peace: we ourselves here in Kyrgyzstan must begin to build peace. Our political leaders must give priority to dialogue and peace, essential for the common good. For our part, we will pray and ask for the assistance of the Holy Spirit for a future of reconciliation and wellbeing in the country."

"We need to grow, with the help of Providence, to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God to the heart of Asia."

"St Ignatius' precept was the ideal which inspired the late Cardinal's whole life in his faithful, caring, intelligent and prudent, generous and impartial outlook. He knew of the faults that existed in the Church and in her men, but with caring dedication, full of love and faith, he helped to alleviate their effects, working for the authentic renewal of the Church."

"Father General was in full agreement with the line indicated by the Council, precisely in the challenging effort to reconcile what is enduring, and therefore unchangeable, in the charism of the Society with the demands of the current situation in the life of the Church and of the world. This is a difficult and delicate task and it is no wonder that in so many areas there was a difference of opinion."