Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.
Josef PieperRead
The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True friendship with God offers a profound understanding of reality that most people do not perceive.
In this quote, Josef Pieper emphasizes the idea that genuine friendship with God allows individuals to gain insights and awareness into a deeper level of reality that is often inaccessible to those who lack such a relationship. This perspective encourages a spiritual connection that reveals truths and dimensions beyond ordinary human understanding.
Themes
FriendshipGodAwarenessRealitySpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon about deepening our relationship with God, this quote can highlight the transformative power of spiritual friendship.
More from Josef Pieper
All quotes βBeing precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good.
Josef PieperRead
Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.
Josef PieperRead
The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.
Josef PieperRead
The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.
Josef PieperRead
To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole.
Josef PieperRead
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A candle loses nothing when it lights another candle.
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Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.
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We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Let our friends perish, provided that our enemies fall at the same time.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.
DiogenesRead