To recognize the world as ordinary is beyond my strength. For me it is magnificent and horrible, impossible to bear. Everything indicates that either it was created by the devil or, as it is now, is the result of a primordial catastrophe. In the second case, the death on the cross of a divine Redeemer acquires full meaning.

Our tearing away from the ordinariness of the world is like the efforts of a fly whose leg is stuck in glue. No logic in this unwillingness to accept. We must concede, however, that the logic offered by the Book of Genesis is no better. Our first parents sinned, were expelled from Paradise, and we continue to live in the state of fallen creatures. But what happened to those animals in theGarden of Eden? Did the sin of man change First Nature, as the cabalists maintain, into a deteriorated Second Nature, which has been longing ever since for a return to the moment when again the lion would lie down with the man?