“What was God doing with himself before the creation?”

“The question 'What was there before creation?' is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation.”

“For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he is his deep heart conceives God to be like.”

“The creation of man whom God in his foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man's glory and power. But by God's help. By His help and in His wisdom.”

“Our vocation is not something we do for God- which would put the burden on us to perform and achieve. Instead, it is a way we participate in God's work. For God himself is engaged not only in the work of salvation, but also in the work of preserving and maintaining His creation.”

“There is something explainable about what man has accomplished in God's creation, while the creation itself remains a mystery.”