I cannot retain true Childhood unless I am continually putting away childish things. —Robert Hugh Benson, The Friendship of Christ, 1912, p. 5

@LeoWong To have a knowledge of the Creator is incalculably a more noble thing than to have a knowledge of His Creation. Ibid., p. 6

@LeoWong For the most part it is of His Humanity that the Gospels tell us. Ibid., p. 8

@LeoWong The consciousness of the friendship of Jesus Christ is the very secret of the Saints. Ibid., p. 10

@LeoWong We take the little event as a symbol of a universe that lies behind. Ibid., p. 15

@LeoWong Jesus Christ has leapt forward two thousand years, and is standing by our side. Ibid., p. 16

@LeoWong Up to now our Lord has been content with very little. Ibid., p. 18

@LeoWong The Way of Divine Love has been trodden and retrodden already a thousand times. It is useful to reflect that since this Friendship is one between two human souls, it will follow in a great degree the regular lines of all other friendships. Ibid., pp. 19–20

@LeoWong the first sign that the Way of Purgation has been really entered, lies in a consciousness that there is beginning for her an experience which the world calls Disillusionment. Ibid., p. 24

@LeoWong It must be remembered, a soul that has once known Christ can never be quite as one that has not known Him. Ibid., pp. 27–28

@LeoWong The soul has to learn that not only must she relinquish all that is not Christ, but she must relinquish Christ — leave, that is to say, her energetic hold on Him, and be content, instead, to be altogether held and supported by Him. Ibid., p. 29

@LeoWong The soul sees for the first time that there is no good in herself apart from Christ; that He must be all, and she nothing. Ibid., p. 30

@LeoWong Practically all the really great heresiarchs have enjoyed a high degree of interior knowledge, or they could have led none of Christ's simple friends astray. Ibid., p. 41

@LeoWong In the Blessed Sacrament Jesus actually conveys to us gifts which we cannot otherwise claim. He brings near to us, and unites to us, not only His Divinity, but that same dear and adorable Human Nature which He assumed on earth for this very purpose. Ibid., p. 47

@LeoWong Those who do not "know Him in the breaking of bread," however great may be their interior knowledge of Him, cannot know one tithe of His perfections. If He merely lived in Heaven, He would not be the Christ of the Gospels. Ibid., p. 53

@LeoWong There is no obstinacy like religious obstinacy; for the spiritual man encourages himself in his wrong course, by a conviction that he is following Divine guidance. He is not, to his own knowledge, wilful or perverse: on the contrary, he is persuaded that he is an obedient follower of a Divine interior monitor. There is no fanatic so extravagant as a religious fanatic. ibid., p. 56

@LeoWong It is through that Body of Christ [the Church] that His Voice actually speaks, exteriorly and authoritatively; and it is only by submission to that Voice that we can test these private intimations and ideas, as to whether they are indeed of God or not. Ibid., p. 60

@LeoWong A Catholic soul must aim at an instinctive attitude; an intuitive atmosphere — such as we see again in simple and faithful Catholics, usually uneducated, who, while knowing little or nothing of exact dogmatic or moral theology, yet detect with an almost miraculous swiftness heretical tendencies or dangerous teaching, which perhaps not even a trained theologian could analyse at once. Ibid. p. 63

[This the Church once provided and Pope Francis lacks.]

@LeoWong The Church does not silence those who present old dogmas in new phrases: but emphatically she repudiates those who, as some recent thinkers have attempted to do, seek to present new dogmas under the cover of the old words. Ibid., p. 69

@LeoWong It is the priest's supreme privilege, as well as his terrifying responsibility, to be, in those moments [of the Mass and iConfession] during which he exercises his ministry, in a sense Christ Himself. He says not, "May Christ absolve thee"; but "I absolve thee"; not, "This is the Body of Christ"; but, "This is My Body." Ibid., p. 72

[If this is true, how can a priest leave the priesthood?]

@LeoWong Every Catholic knows perfectly well that all the worship and honour given to Mary are given with the sole object of uniting the worshipper with that "blessed fruit of her womb," whom she extends to us in every image, whether as the Child of Joy or as the Man of Sorrows. It is only those who are doubtful, or at least doctrinally vague, as to the absolute Deity of Christ, who can conceive it even as possible for an intelligent Christian to confound Christ with His Mother, or to imagine the Creator and the Creature as standing even in the remotest competition one with the other. Ibid., p. 78

[No need to always bring up latria and hyperdulia.]

@LeoWong Christ is in the saints as a flame is in a lantern; their lives are not mere imitations or reflections of His, but actually manifestations of it. The graces that they display are actually the same graces as those with which this Sacred Humanity was saturated; their horror of sin is His; the powers which they exercise are His. Ibid., p. 81

@LeoWong It is "now not (they) ; but Christ that liveth in them." Ibid., p. 83

[.]

@LeoWong The recognition of Christ in the Sinner is the single essential to our capacity for helping the sinner. Ibid., p. 89

Not that Christ is the sinner, but that Christ is in the sinner.

@LeoWong The crucifix and the Sinner are profoundly, and not merely superficially, alike in this — that both are what the rebellious self-will of man has made of the Image of God; and therefore should be the object of the deepest devotion of all who desire to see that Image restored again to glory. Ibid., p. 91

@LeoWong Sufferers are extensions of Christ Himself crucified, as His priests are His agents. Ibid., p. 106

[But Christ was willing.]

@LeoWong Let us make haste to minister wine, instead of vinegar, to our Friend who cries for it. Ibid., p. 108

@LeoWong A murderer recognized the Lord of Life, a liar spoke the truth, an outlaw submitted to the King. "Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom." Ibid., p. 121

@LeoWong A religion that presented to us Mary with her living child in her arms, and had no Mary with her dead Son across her knees, could not have been the religion to which we should turn in utter confidence when all else had failed. Ibid., p. 129

@LeoWong He must actually be our Way by which we come to Him. Ibid., p. 141

@LeoWong "I thirst." It is Jesus Himself who so cries; and when He uttered His petition, by the side of Jacob's well, and on the Cross of Calvary — even the Samaritan woman, the alien from Good's commonwealth, even the soldiers of an Empire that was at war with God's kingdom, had mercy upon Him, and gave Him to drink. Ibid., p. 143

@LeoWong It is a greater act to restore than to create. Ibid., p. 144