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.
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
The glory of God always comes at the sacrifice of self.
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
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