Theodore Rebard writes for Crisis Magazine, The Origins of Modern Materialism , a revealing piece that traces today’s materialistic mentality back in time to the early fifteenth century, along with its relation to thinking in terms of quantity versus quality. “Absent the spiritual world, and therefore absent God, charity becomes worthless, and happiness itself is rendered impossible; after all, charity and happiness are not quantifiable.”
Here’s the seventh of the Nine Discourses for Times of Calamities, God Chastises us in this Life, only that He may show us Mercy in the Next, by Saint Alphonsus Liguori from Catholic Harbor of Faith and Morals, in which God’s unfathomable love for His creatures truly shines forth, putting to shame the infidelity of the human race as a whole. “What can I do, O sinner! to work your conversion? will the Lord then say. I have called you by sermons and inspirations, and you have despised them; I have called you by favors, and you have grown more insolent; I have called you by scourges, and you continue to offend me. For what shall I strike you any more, you that increase transgression; . . . and the daughter of Sion shall be left as a city that is laid waste (Is. i. 5-8).”
