DEATH IS AN ENCOUNTER

'To a Christian, death is no black hole, no brick wall, no absorbing oblivion. To a Christian, death is an encounter. We are not the victims of death. Death is something we perform. It is a task, the culmination of our Christian lives. We enact it as we abandon ourselves, with confidence and trust, to the 'everlasting arms' that have carried us, we know, all the way we have walked, and that will bear us still when we can walk no longer.'

Erik Varden, The Twofold Mystery, p.251.

DO YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND?

'The call to be a saint comes in the form of an invitation. Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth, approaches us with something like the modesty of a little child, a child who has not yet to dissimulate the stirrings of the heart, and has the courage to say: 'Do you want to be my friend?' Such is the humility of our God. Such is the nature of his love.'

Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery, p.249.

HUMILITY

'To be humble is to own the reality about myself, to be fully me, without pretending to be more. It's to know who I am, what I've been, what I'm called to become. It's to bid farewell, once for all, to illusions of grandeur.'

Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery, p.243.