Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
Fulton J. SheenRead
Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how Christianity uniquely begins with struggle but ultimately leads to triumph, contrasting it with other religions.
Fulton J. Sheen's quote emphasizes the foundational narrative of Christianity, which starts with the suffering of Christ on the Cross and culminates in the resurrection, symbolizing hope and victory. This perspective suggests that true strength and hope often arise from moments of defeat and hardship, setting Christianity apart from other belief systems that may promise easy answers or comfort without acknowledging the trials inherent in life.
Themes
ChristianityDefeatVictoryFaithResurrection
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon about overcoming challenges, one might quote this to encourage resilience.
More from Fulton J. Sheen
All quotes →A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!
Fulton J. SheenRead
No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
Fulton J. SheenRead
The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Similar quotes
It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity.
Beatrice WebbRead
"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto EcoRead
He look'd in years, yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor, and autumnal green.
John DrydenRead
The world does not yield to changing. By its very nature it is painful and transient. See it as it is and divest yourself of all desire and fear. When the world does not hold and bind you, it becomes an abode of joy and beauty. You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
I'd rather be at the end of a dying tradition, which I admire, than at the beginning of a tradition which I deplore.
Margaret DrabbleRead