Religion
King Albert was a devout Catholic. Many stories illustrate his deep and tender piety. For instance, when his former tutor, General De Grunne, in his old age, entered the Benedictine monastery of Maredsous, Belgium, King Albert wrote a letter to him, in which he spoke of the joy of giving oneself to God. He said: "May you spend many years at Maredsous in the supreme comfort of soul that is given, to natures touched by grace, by faith in God's infinite power and confidence in His goodness". To another friend, a Chinese diplomat, who became a Catholic monk, Albert wrote: "Consecrating oneself wholly to the service of Our Lord gives, to those touched by grace, the peace of soul which is the supreme happiness here below". Albert used to tell his children: "As you nourish your body, so you should nourish your soul." In an interesting meditation on what he viewed as the harm which would result if Christian ideals were abandoned in Belgium, he said: "Every time society has distanced itself from the Gospel, which preached humility, fraternity, and peace, the people have been unhappy, because the pagan civilization of ancient Rome, which they wanted to replace it with, is based only on pride and the abuse of force" (Commemorative speech for the war dead of the Battle of the Yser, given by Dom Marie-Albert, Abbot of Orval Abbey, Belgium, in 1936 ).
Read more about this topic: Albert I Of Belgium
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I read ... an article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children to be skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)