Henri De Lubacs Catholicism at 70 Years

“The Church concentrates spirits and broadens them. In this she is catholic. She is ‘the concrete place of hope.’”

“Our natural desire for God entails a renunciation both of self-sufficiency and of demand. To want a gratuitous friendship is also to want to be surprised, and so to refuse to know in advance the actual shape of that gratuity.”

"Communion and sacrifice are mutually constitutive."

“Beatitude is twofold: the first is ‘natural’ and the second is ‘supernatural.’”

“To remind man what constitutes his final end is not to tell him something that substantially fails to interest him. . . . It is rather to illuminate the total meaning of his being by helping him to find and then to interpret the inscription written into his heart by his Creator.”

“If the bishop of Rome enjoys any primacy whatsoever, it is only because the Church as a whole is primary.”