Manifestation of God's Love - a Literary Example

from Uncle Tom's Cabin...

Here is George, Eliza's husband, after being reunited with her and their son in a Quaker farmhouse and accepted as an equal by their hosts.

It was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at any white man's table; and he sat down, at first, with some constraint, and awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog, in the genial morning rays of this simple overflowing kindness.

This indeed, was a home, - home, - a word that George had never yet known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in His providence, began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining, atheistic doubts, and fierce despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good-will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, shall never lose their reward.

This seemed rather pertinent to our Deus Caritas Est discussions.

Augustine a Model of Conversion...

This is a great piece from Zenit and Pope Benedict XVI

A Sense of Mystery or Wonder

Another excerpt from Fr. Benedict Groeschel's A Virtue Driven Life...

First part of (another) piece that he quotes from Cardinal Newman:

A religious mind is ever marvelling, and irreligious men laugh and scoff at it because it marvels. A religious mind is ever looking out of itself, is ever pondering God's words, is ever "looking into" them with the Angels, is ever realizing to itself Him on whom it depends, and who is the centre of all truth and good. Carnal and proud minds are contented with self; they like to remain at home; when they hear of mysteries, they have no devout curiosity to go and see the great sight, though it be ever so little out of their way; and when it actually falls in their path, they stumble at it.

Then some follow-up from Father Groeschel...

While it is true that some people are too credulous, even superstitious, about private revelations, others with little thought will assume they could never happen. They therefore dismiss shrines like Lourdes, Fatima, or Paray-le-Monial, and discount the revelations of God's love for the human race through the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The skeptics might accept Saint Francis because he spoke to the birds and wrote nice prayers, but they would forget that he also had visions of Christ and received the stigmata. They favor a Christ walking through the fields and greeting the lepers, but they are intimidated by the thought that He cured and that He rose physically from the dead. They lack any sense of mystery or wonder. They reduce religion to something they can measure with their own limited minds.