Person and Community

“The ‘fundamental polarity’ of self-possession and self-donation together with the unique and unrepeatable identity signified by the term ‘person’ are recapitulated and revealed in the eucharistic self-offering of Christ.”

“Man is capable of giving himself in a complete and genuinely ontological way only because his being is already gift, and his being is gift by virtue of the act of the Creator, who willed him for his own sake and by that fact willed him to will himself in an act of self-giving.”

“[T]he concept of participation consists in securing man’s transcendence in his action together with other people and not—as in Marxism—in presupposing man’s determination by internal or external factors.”

“[M]arried Catholics actively participate in the offering of the Mass and receive communion always as the living sacramental sign of what they are receiving.”

“[A] person is a distinct subsisting being whose rational nature is capable of realizing relationality (and, with it, all the transcendentals) in a conscious and free exchange of love.”

“The fourth gospel presents the task of meeting and recognizing the Creator as the existential task of man.”

“Evolution could . . . be interpreted as the process by which each creature seeks to imitate the divine goodness more fully in a manner proper to its nature.”