“…every material reality has a spiritual aspect to it, that the seen and the unseen are deeply intertwined… If we had stood at Golgotha on the day of the Crucifixion, our material eyes would have seen Roman soldiers nailing Jesus to the Cross. But our eyes of faithfulness would have seen the young Warrior, ready to do battle, about to use this Weapon of Peace, the Trophy Invincible, as His means to enter into Hades, smash down its doors, and to defeat the devil and death. If you participate in the services of the Church, then you see both these realities simultaneously. This truth shines forth perhaps most brilliantly in Holy Week, where we feel both the agony and sorrow of Christ’s passion as well as the glory and victory of His destruction of death and giving resurrection to the fallen.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
“All creation, seen and unseen, has its source in Him [Christ] as God. He is the beginning of all things. With respect to the creation, the Apostle John says, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (Jn 1:2-3).” (Dynamis 10/17/2018)
“Even in the 4th Century, philosophers wondered how the material cosmos could have been created by an immaterial being. That question is still a stumbling block for some atheists today. St Gregory’s [of Nyssa] answer probably would not satisfy unbelievers today, for Gregory’s solution is that the material creation is not merely physical but its existence is in God, so each thing has an immaterial nature because each thing’s form/essence is in God’s mind.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“This is the axiom: when we seek to use the unseen in a manner that controls or directs the world around us, we have left the path of true belief and entered the world of magic and superstition. It is, oddly, the opposite of the sacramental life. In the sacraments, material things are used for the purpose of communion with the immaterial with the sole intent of communion with God. In magic and superstition, we seek to manipulate the immaterial world for the sake of controlling and managing the material world. It is actually a form of secularism – one which presumes that the material world itself is the true and final place of our existence.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“There is the seen, and there is the unseen, the material and the immaterial. That which is material can be scientifically examined and experienced, the immaterial can only be seen and experienced spiritually. These are two worlds that are only seemingly at odds with one another. If you attempt to examine that which is of a spiritual nature using a science that is by its very nature meant to explore the material realm, you will fail. The things that are of God are far beyond the capabilities of our finite mind to comprehend. The divine can only be known through the nous, that place in the heart that is our true center. It, unlike the brain, is capable of knowledge that is beyond human comprehension, coming as it does from noetic knowledge.” (Abbot Tryphon)
“Christianity is a way of seeing all of life and reality through God’s eyes. That is what Christianity is: a world view, a system, and a way of life." (Chuck Colson)
“We are created as sensory beings for this very reason—so that God can reveal Himself to us. When we fail to see the reality around us as a divine manifestation of His presence, we forget the ultimate reality and begin to experience distortion. We become less real.” (Kevin Scherer)
“The only reason the material world had any meaning at all was because of its relationship to God. Medieval man held that reality—what was really real—was outside himself and that dwelling in the darkness of the Fall, he could not fully perceive it.” (Rod Dreher)
“Symbol, in its primary meaning, refers to something that makes something else present or that contains something else within it. It is sym-bole, a “throwing-together” of things. In our modern world, we believe a symbol is something that makes us think of another thing that is not there. Such a symbol is a sign of absence. The older and original meaning is like that of a sacrament (the Fathers had no problem calling the Eucharist a “symbol” in this older meaning). A symbol carries within it the reality of the other thing.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
#ChuckColson #KevinScherer #RodDreher #FatherStephenFreeman #JRRTolkien #FrAndrewStephenDamick #Dynamis #FrTedBobosh #AbbotTryphon