"The stereotyped image [of the saint] is easy to sketch out here: it is essentially an image without the slightest moral flaw. The saint, if he ever sinned at all, eventually became impeccable after a perfect conversion. Impeccability not being quite enough, he is raised beyond the faintest possibility of feeling temptation...His words are always the most edifying cliches...they are without humor as they are without wonder, without feeling and without interest in the common affairs of mankind. Until we realize that before a man can become a saint he must first of all be a man in all the humanity and fragility of man's actual condition, we will never be able to understand the meaning of the word "saint". Not only were all the saints perfectly human, not only did their sanctity enrich and deepen their humanity, but the Holiest of all the Saints, the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, was Himself the most deeply and perfectly human being who ever lived on the face of the earth...Hence sanctity is not a matter of being less human, but more human than other men. This implies a greater capacity for concerns, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for appreciation of the good and beautiful things of life. The true saint is not one who has become convinces that he himself is holy, but one who is overwhelmed by the realization that God, and God along, is holy. He is awestruck with the reality of the divine holiness that he begins to see it everywhere".
"Contemplation is the highest expression of a man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is the life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is the gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is the a vivid realization of the fact that life and being is proceed from an invisible transcendent and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is above all awareness of the reality of that source. Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him who has no voice, and yet speaks in everything that is, and who, most of all speaks in the depths of our own begin.: for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer Him, to echo Him and even in some ways to contain Him and signify Him."
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