Quote #8

'We should consider for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life is based on the reality of 'Grace'; let us also recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called 'Gift'; that the greatest Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on Love; that something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved - is presumed in everything achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something received - if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that seperates this other attitude from the inheritence of Christian Europe.'

More from Josef Pieper

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  2. 'Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability…
  3. 'Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will.'
  4. 'The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Ch…
  5. 'A friend and a prudent friend, can help to shape a friend's decision. He does so by virtue of that love which makes the friend's problem h…
  6. 'The truth is the good of our knowing mind, upon which the mind fixes itself by nature; it is not granted to the mind to choose or not choo…
  7. 'Modern religious teaching have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.'
  8. 'Being precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good.'

All Josef Pieper quotes