But "by the cross, joy entered the whole world." Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is not taken "until death parts," but until death unites us completely. from...
The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
Life has got to be bigger than death, and love has got to be bigger than fear or this is all a total bust and we are all just going tourist class.
If you knew how quickly people would forget about you after your death, you will not seek in your life to please anyone but God. (circa 387)
How we learn to live with the death of a loved one differs with each one of us. We must all find a way to grieve. As the theologian, Tom Wright said, "Not to grieve, not to lament is to slam the door on the very same place in the innermost heart from which love itself...
Death of a loved one is a tear in the social fabric…it evokes two great needs, both of them very public. First, the body must be cared for and given disposition. Second, the community needs to tell once more the story of the life of the one who has died and the...
What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
The worst thing is not the sorrow or the loss or the heartbreak. Worse is to be encountered by death and not to be changed by the encounter. There are pills we take to get through the experience, but the danger is that we then do not go through the experience but...
Whether death comes from cancer or tsunami, grief is a language everyone speaks.
When we choose to love, we choose to face death, and grief and loss, again and again and again. Just as much as we choose the friendlier parts of love. It's all there, present and contained, in everything.