Spiritual Quote of the Day (John Courtney Murray, on ‘The History Which God Makes’)

“For the Christian affirmation is that there is indeed another history, the history which God makes, and which takes place in and through the events of human history.  This history of salvation can be seen only with the eyes of faith and its external manifestation is a sign, the sacrament which is the church.  Yet this instrument of Christ’s revelation has, in cold historical fact, obscured his face and failed to proclaim his message.  This the church has done not through malice but simply because she is human.  Her members are therefore themselves in some sense unbelievers, and must share responsibility for the unbelief of the world around them.  This world in turn cannot be absolved from its own guilt, for there will always be men who freely choose to live in darkness rather than in light.  Yet what the Christian must guard against, when he and his church present themselves to the world in which they live, is that this world should not encounter in them that portion of darkness which is theirs.  This we all pray for, that the light which is Christ may break through our darkness, and that contemporary unbelief may find in the church a sacrament of Christian faith.”—American Roman Catholic theologian Fr. John Courtney Murray (1904-1967), “The Unbelief Of The Christian,” originally published in The Presence and Absence of God (1969), republished in American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Michael Warner (1999)