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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the differing perspectives of Protestants and Catholics regarding the sacraments and their relationship with God.
In this quote, Peter Kreeft illustrates the contrasting views of Protestants and Catholics on the significance of sacraments. For Protestants, sacraments serve as tools for believers to reach towards God, emphasizing human effort in the spiritual journey. Conversely, Catholics perceive sacraments as divine means through which God reaches out to humanity, highlighting God's initiative and grace in the relationship between the divine and mankind. This duality of perspectives invites reflection on the nature of faith and the means by which individuals relate to the divine.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of sacraments in different denominations.
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.
One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.
Show me a movement that doesn't hate somebody and I will join it at once.
Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.
We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood
We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.
"Why are breakfast food breakfast foods?" I asked them. "Like, why don't we have curry for breakfast?" "Hazel, eat." "But why?" I asked. "I mean seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has an egg, boom, it's a breakfast sandwich."
I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die.
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