My soul needs relatively constant refreshment via insightful theology and philosophy, but practical concerns limit my ability to read all that would benefit me. Smaller quotes from such important works suffice for these purposes. Here are a few of my favorites – spare yourself a few moments of your full presence and attention to ponder them.
It seems fitting to begin by referencing St. Augustine of Hippo, certainly one of the most influential figures in church history. He said, “And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.” Augustine is more right than we would like to admit. Surely God gave us an incredible world to live in and filled it with wonders that boggle the imagination, but that is not all. He did something even more groundbreaking and radical. He made us. What could possibly explain such a mystery? He put an inexplicable creature into His glorious creation, one who would revel in it, and by his mad hubris sully it.
Another important figure from a starkly different time period, G.K. Chesterton, must also be included. Chesterton, though he was one of the most respected intellectuals of the 20th century, was also a profoundly humble man. His incredible intellect and sharp wit did not distract him from the mystery, the absolutely inexplicable paradox that is Jesus Christ. In an introduction to the Book of Job, an unsettling narrative that asks us to recognize in God’s presence and voice the only thing that could ever answer our questions, he wrote these words: “The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”
Consider also the fount of theological wisdom found in N.T. Wright, a widely respected New Testament scholar at the University of St. Andrews. “Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.” These words are meaningful for too many reasons than I can detail here, but try to grasp the significance of all of your deepest hopes, embodied in this person. Now picture Hope transcending the rules of time and space to bring fulfillment of that yearning to you today. I cannot conceive of anything more radical. It is scandalous, really.
The next quote cannot be attributed to a highly educated theologian, but it has a clarity and insight that parallels any erudite treatise of Chesterton or Wright. It is a short lyric from a song by musician Steven Curtis Chapman: “This is how love wins … by climbing high upon a tree where someone else should die.” In a world that is desperately confused about what love means, it is reassuring to hear that it has already been defined and demonstrated to us. Christ’s Passion is the true image of love, a self-effacing love which conquers every enemy.
To finish, consider the famous C.S. Lewis, often cited as the modern era’s greatest apologist. Lewis identified in much of human experience a phenomenon he could only pinpoint as sehnsucht, a German term often translated as “longing.” Everything beautiful, he argued, awakes in us a desire for the paradise for which we were created. “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” This longing is for our patria, our homeland, the place that our souls know they are called to. It is a unique feature of sehnsucht that it is not simply a desire to be free of the world’s pain. It is a deep connection to our true home that is drawn out by reflections of the beauty of that home. It is with that stirring idea that I leave you: “It was when I was happiest that I longed most ... The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing ... to find the place where all the beauty came from.”
