Being Disguised Under The Disfigurement Of An

Wonder — The Enthusiastic Ardor For The Sublimity Of Being, For Its Worthiness To Be An Object Of Knowledge — Promises To Become The Point Of Departure For Genuine Insight Only Where It Has Reached The Stage In Which The Subject, Overwhelmed By The Object, Has, As It Were, Fused Into A Single Point Or Into Nothing.

What The Father Gives Is The Capacity To Be A Self, Freedom, And Thus Autonomy, But An Autonomy Which Can Be Understood Only As A Surrender Of Self To The Other.

But The Saints Are Never The Kind Of Killjoy Spinster Aunts Who Go In For Faultfinding And Lack All Sense Of Humor. (nor Should The Karl Barth Who So Loved And Understood Mozart Be Regarded As Such.)for Humor Is A Mysterious But Unmistakable Charism Inseparable From Catholic Faith, And Neither The "progressives" Nor The "integralists" Seem To Possess It - The Latter Even Less Than The Former.

One Can Understand Nothing Of Christ Without The Mystery Of The Trinity, Nothing Of The Church Without Faith In The Divinity And Humanity Of Christ, Nothing Of The Sacraments Without The Bridal Mystery Between Christian Life Without Christian Faith. Thus, The Present Sermons Revolve Around The Same Center--the Inexhaustible Mystery Of The One Indivisible Faith.

Hence The Importance Of Patience In The New Testament, Which Becomes The Basic Constituent Of Christianity, More Central Even Than Humility: The Power To Wait, To Persevere, To Hold Out, To Endure To The End, Not To Transcend One's Own Limitations, Not To Force Issues By Playing The Hero Or The Titan, But To Practice The Virtue That Lies Beyond Heroism, The Meekness Of The Lamb Which Is Led.