“Here we have reached a point at which the innermost unity and simplicity of Christianity show themselves for what they are.  I may declare that the heart of Christianity is the Paschal mystery of death and resurrection.  Or I may say that this midpoint really consists in justification by faith.  Or, again, I may affirm that the center of it all is the triune God, and therefore, love as the alpha and omega of the world.  These three statements are, in fact, identical.  In all three the self-same truth is indicated: sharing in the martyria of Jesus by that dying which is faith and love.  Such faith and love are simultaneously God’s acceptance of my life and my will to embrace the divine acceptance.  And all this is from the God who can be love only as the triune God and who, in thus being love, makes the world bearable after all.”

•  Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 100.