The Gospel is full of paradoxes, by which the mind is at first troubled. The Savior teaches with great simplicity, yet he says also, "Blessed is he t… - Henri de Lubac

No one has the right to say with Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" [Gen 4:9] No one is a Christian for himself alone.

The human intelligence is made in such a way that, if it has the power to criticize its own representations [of divine matters], it does not have an equal power to replace them. It succeeds in detecting everything inadequate in them: it is precisely in this that its greatness shines. But it will never possess the adequate formula that would put an end to its search. That is why it can seem to the intelligence that through this work of criticism it is carrying out a negative work. At the very least, it seems, through a series of overly subtle steps, to be compromising the truth of which it had at first an assured, total perception, although the expression that was given of it was, as it well knew, only roughly approximate. With its s, in its imaginative conceptions, it at least enclosed a certain truth. It held it in tuto [securely]. Now is this very truth not going to be called into question? Such is the objection—or rather such is the instinctive fear—that any attempt at real reflection always awakens. The life of the spirit, like that of the body, is inevitably the source of "unease". The dead alone are in complete repose. The intelligence is thus in dread of itself. It fears generating its own bewilderment.

There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.