God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that along with truth, we are also granted the perspective to perceive and understand it.
Peter Kreeft suggests that the gifts from God encompass both the truths of life and the insight required to recognize and appreciate those truths. It implies that understanding comes not only from the information we receive but also from the capacity to interpret it correctly, fostering a deeper appreciation for both knowledge and perception.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of faith and understanding.
Trusting God's grace means trusting God's love for us rather than our love for God. [...] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God's love for us rather than trying to rouse God's awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).
Remembering the facts of death and Heaven gives us an even more pressing reason to learn to pray: We do not have an infinite amount of time. We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.'
Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.
The modern mind always tends to reduce the greater to the lesser rather than seeing the lesser as reflecting the greater.
Our soul, like Mary's body, is to receive God Himself if only we, like her, believe, consent and receive; if only we speak her truly magic word fiat, "let it be." It is the creative word, the word God used to create the universe.
Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.
If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.
It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)
This hour we are stretching forth our hands with the desire to teach the world the true principles of mercy and justice.
When you think about growing and being empowered yourself, it is what you've been able to do for other people that leaves you the fullest.
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