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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of faith and acceptance in receiving divine grace.
In this quote, Peter Kreeft draws a parallel between the receptivity of the Virgin Mary and our own souls in relation to God. He suggests that just as Mary accepted God's will by saying 'fiat'—meaning 'let it be'—we too can open ourselves to divine grace through belief and consent. The use of the term 'fiat' highlights the creative power of words and faith, suggesting that our willingness to accept God's presence can lead to profound transformation.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a religious gathering to inspire believers to open their hearts.
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.
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.
One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.
AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.
The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us.
I am for . . . each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.
The mind is a product of experience. It is the result of past thinking and is modified by present thinking.
The most complete revenge is not to imitate the aggressor.
I don't think it's fair to 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to say 'Show us you're a winner right now!' Winning isn't everything. I'll never buy that thing that if a boy loses a football game, he's a loser in life.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.