Mystery Quotes - page 51
"According to your faith, be it done unto you,” says God. (Matt 9:29) I do not, indeed, like the sound of those words. For if it be done unto me according to my faith, I shall perish. And yet I certainly believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son, and I believe in God the Holy Ghost. I believe in one God; nevertheless, I would not have it done unto me according to my faith. For the enemy often comes, and sows tares in the Lord's harvest. I do not mean to imply that anything is greater than the purity of heart which believes that mystery; but undoubted faith towards God it is hard indeed to find.
Jerome
This Extraordinary Holy Year is itself a gift of grace. To pass through the Holy Door means to rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father who welcomes everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them. This will be a year in which we grow ever more convinced of God's mercy. How much wrong we do to God and his grace when we speak of sins being punished by his judgment before we speak of their being forgiven by his mercy! But that is the truth. We have to put mercy before judgment, and in any event God's judgement will always be in the light of his mercy. In passing through the Holy Door, then, may we feel that we ourselves are part of this mystery of love. Let us set aside all fear and dread, for these do not befit men and women who are loved. Instead, let us experience the joy of encountering that grace which transforms all things.
Pope Francis
Aurangzeb's orthodoxy cannot, of course, be entirely denied. Therefore, explanations upon explanations – secular explanations! – are invented...The general conclusion: what Aurangzeb did ‘was a setback to the policy of broad toleration followed by his predecessors'! And even he did it for secular reasons! And even though compelled by these reasons, he did it only for the shortest time, for the years marked by hostilities instigated by ‘local elements'! ... However, there is little mystery. For there are two pillars of progressive history writing in India: first, to fabricate evidence which will establish Hindus to be intolerant; second, to respect and show an empathetic understanding of Islamic communalism. And the litmus test of whether you are committed to secular history writing is whether you are prepared to stand up for Aurangzeb!
Aurangzeb
When Christianity becomes conscious of its innermost nature, it realizes that it is godliness rising our of inward constraint. The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery. Neither knowledge nor hope for the future can be the pivot of our life or determine its direction. It is intended to be solely determined by our allowing ourselves to be gripped by the ethical God, who reveals Himself in us, and by our yielding our will to His.
Albert Schweitzer
The mysteries of the Bible should teach us, at one and the same time, our nothingness and our greatness; producing humility, and animating hope. I bow before these mysteries. I knew that I should find them, and I pretend not to remove them. But whilst I thus prostrate myself, it is with deep gladness and exultation of spirit. God would not have hinted the mystery, had He not hereafter designed to explain it. And, therefore, are my thoughts on a far-off home, and rich things are around me, and the voices of many harpers, and the shinings of bright constellations, and the clusters of the cherub and the seraph; and a whisper, which seems not of this earth, is circulating through the soul, " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known."
Henry Melvill
I don't know what life would be like without music. In my lonely times, music has been my closest friend. It has also been my doctor-and my lover, in the sense that I sometimes listen to music and dream of a lover that doesn't exist. Late at night, when I don't feel sleepy, I'll play music-all types of music and lose myself in its mystery. I might decide to play Stevie Wonder, or Debussy, or Tchaikovsky. It depends on my mood.
Stevie Wonder
I seem to see only the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who has reeled blunderingly from mystery to mystery, with pathetic makeshifts, not understanding anything, greedy in all desires, and always honeycombed with poltroonery. So in a secret place his youth was put away in exchange for a prize that was hardly worth the having; and the fine geas which his mother laid upon him was exchanged for the common geas of what seems expected.
James Branch Cabell
There is no mystery to the Arab texts used for domestic consumption; they openly discuss the destruction of Israel. Didn't the first president of the Algerian republic, Ben Bella, go so far as to declare that, if he had had an atomic bomb, he would have launched it against Israel, which had become a kind of absolute evil?
Albert Memmi
Everything which the ego is able to unfold within itself must give birth to love. The all-embracing archetype of love is set forth in the revelation of... the Christ Mystery. Through Him the germ of love is planted in the innermost core of the human being; and from this starting-point it must flow through the whole of evolution. Just as the wisdom previously formed manifests in the forces of the earthly sense-world, in the "elementary forces” of to-day, so love itself will manifest in the future, in all phenomena, as the new "elementary force.”.
Rudolf Steiner
I cannot claim to have had any direct personal divine inspiration. Yet coping with multitudinous problem-solving efforts and observing the world in which I live evokes an openness to a mystery of being that I cannot deny. Critical reflection leads me to believe than an awareness of such mysteries is a necessity in the constitution of order in democratic societies. If religion is a necessity in the conceptualization of paradigmatically diverse formulations, religion might be viewed as a necessary element in a system of knowledge pertaining to the consitution of order. We do, however, face the problem of those system of order that were constituted under circumstances of explicitly rejecting religion as a necessary feature in their constitution. We have the potential, then, of those who reject religion becoming the prophets of new secular religions. What we call "ideologies" may be the source of that most profound pathologies in human personal and social disorders.
Vincent Ostrom
The Harmony of the World is the continuation of the Cosmic Mystery, and the climax of his lifelong obsession. What Kepler attempted here is, simply, to bare the ultimate secret of the universe in an all-embracing synthesis of geometry, music, astrology, astronomy and epistemology. It was the first attempt of this kind since Plato, and it is the last to our day. After Kepler, fragmentation of experience sets in again, science is divorced from religion, religion from art, substance from form, matter from wind.
Johannes Kepler
Electromagnetic fields are not of the mind... Creation may be spiritual in origin, but that doesn't mean that everything created is spiritual. How can I explain such things to you? Let us accept the world is a mystery. Nature is neither solely material nor entirely spiritual. Man, too, is more than flesh and blood; otherwise, no religions would have been possible. Behind each cause is still another cause; the end or the beginning of all causes has yet to be found. Behind each cause is still another cause; the end or the beginning of all causes has yet to be found. Yet, only one thing must be remembered: there is no effect without a cause, and there is no lawlessness in creation".
Albert Einstein
When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ who is the fullness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world and of the United States, look to Christ. Only in Christ will you fulfill your potential as an American citizen and as a citizen of the world community.
Pope John Paul II
