Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Less Real World

“Prayer is no ordinary conversation. It is conversation wit the invisible world whose existence we can partially reason to, and then only quite dimly, but whose reality and grandeur we can fully know only by faith. Why call this world invisible? Because it is not seen with the eyes of the body, but it is known with the eyes of the mind. It is not only not visible to the eyes of the body, but also not audible with bodily ears, or tangible with bodily hands or palatable with bodily lips or perceptible with any of the bodily senses. And sadly, how tragically, some people suppose that because it is not sensibly perceptible therefore it is not real. It is a world of faith that really exists and as St. Paul tells us is actually more real than the mountains, rivers and seas and more important than even the most important people we could ever meet on earth.”
-Father John A. Hardon, S.J., “Theology of Prayer”

(Sounds an awful lot like Plato’s idea that the “real” world is less real than the “ideal” or spiritual world.)

No comments:

Post a Comment