Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
Fulton J. SheenRead
Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how Christianity uniquely begins with struggle but ultimately leads to triumph, contrasting it with other religions.
Fulton J. Sheen's quote emphasizes the foundational narrative of Christianity, which starts with the suffering of Christ on the Cross and culminates in the resurrection, symbolizing hope and victory. This perspective suggests that true strength and hope often arise from moments of defeat and hardship, setting Christianity apart from other belief systems that may promise easy answers or comfort without acknowledging the trials inherent in life.
Themes
ChristianityDefeatVictoryFaithResurrection
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon about overcoming challenges, one might quote this to encourage resilience.
More from Fulton J. Sheen
All quotes →A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!
Fulton J. SheenRead
No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
Fulton J. SheenRead
The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Similar quotes
Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
Donna TarttRead
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone WeilRead
See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Henry David ThoreauRead
An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else.
C. S. LewisRead
The forms are evanescent; but the spirit, being in the Lord and of the Lord, is immortal and omnipresent.
Swami VivekanandaRead