Jean Guitton Quotes

For Teresa, the way of Mary is a way of faith, without ecstasy, without miracles, even without words.

It is not enough for the past to be past. It must also be truly overcome – it must have lost all causal connection with the present – so that only the spiritual connection remains, which is the connection between image and reality, between figure and fulfilment.

Generals do not fight with the fear of the troops, they prefer to keep them busy.

Joan of Arc possesses more genius than talent, more heroism than courage, more intuition than intelligence, more immediacy than endurance and, if we may say so, more glory than grace. That is why she seems more angelic than human, a traveller from another world, parachuted into this one. (p. 7)

Beauty is a splendour that must detach itself from those who possess it without them noticing and without returning to them.

The atheist confirms faith. And like a guinea pig that confirms my thesis or my faith in God.

Discovering herself as the end of history, the Madonna now had the light to interpret the time that had gone before.

I have always made it a rule to speak in a timeless manner, true today, tomorrow and always.

If the Church has sometimes been against science, the cause lies in its misreading of the Bible.

What is the charm of a person? It is difficult to say, because charm is indefinable. It is a certain presence of the person beyond their limits, like the radiance of certain pure faces.

The real way to resist temptation is to turn away and walk away.

For a Christian, what we call life is a preparation for what we call the “afterlife”, the other life.

So today Mass risks resembling a liturgy of the word? A:

Joan puts God's will above her virginity. She says that she “has offered her virginity as a vow for as long as God pleases”. This concern for the hierarchy of values, this idea of “God first”, is always evident in her. Joan is a virgin because God inspired her to be so; she is not a virgin of her own free will or choice. (pp. 34-35)

Before the Council, Mass was Mass. Obviously, in Latin, we didn't understand anything, but we had the impression (impression???) that it was Mass. Now, however, we have the feeling that it is the translation of a Protestant service. From my point of view, the liturgical reform as desired by the Council (Vatican II) was good; certainly it did not want the Mass, the Eucharist, to be sacrificed, nor above all reduced to what Protestants do during their ceremony, which we call supper. For example, when it was decided that the priest should not say Mass facing the altar, with his back to the faithful, but facing them, a decisive reform was carried out that truly disturbed many Christians. With good reason (With good reason???) — so that the faithful could understand — it was decided to celebrate the liturgy in the common language, but without any desire to abolish the sacred. Today, in practice, the Eucharist no longer has the sacred, serious and divine character it had in the past. (p. 103)