God keeps the entire Universe in order, and still finds time to take a personal interest in you and me.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the idea that despite the vastness of the universe, there is a divine presence that personally cares for each individual.
The quote from Mother Angelica reflects the profound belief in a higher power that not only governs the entire universe with grace and order but also takes a personal interest in every human being. It suggests that even in the complexities and vastness of existence, individuals are valued and cared for at a personal level. This perspective encourages people to feel connected and significant within the grand scheme of life, highlighting the blend of the universal and the personal.
In practice
In a sermon about faith, one might say this quote to illustrate the importance of feeling valued by a higher power.
I am not like a pebble on the beach - a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child - the only fruit of his creative powers.
I must not permit the evil capabilities of human nature to sour my faith in the tremendous good that is possible despite the frailty of that nature.
The sinner who suddenly realizes God's love for him and then looks at his rejection of that love feels a loss similar to the death of a loved one. A deep void is created in the soul and a loneliness akin to the agony of death.
Our memories are our own, and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the past for any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing over past incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.
Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.
Love has been defined, analyzed, explained and excused. It has been the cause of wars, feuds, heroism, martyrdom, inordinate passion, and beautiful friendships. It pulls two people of opposite temperaments together into a married state and permits them to live happily. It makes friends understand each other without the necessity of words.
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.
Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth.
In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will.
No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.
Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future.
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