Peter Kreeft is a famous Catholic speaker and writer who has lectured thousands about the Church and our Faith. Although his lectures are truly awe inspiring, some of the most inspiring moments are from the question and answer sessions after during his lectures.
To save you time time in listening to thousands of hours . . . Dr. Kreeft has gathered 100 of his most interesting questions and answers and put them in a book, Ask Peter Kreeft: The 100 Most Interesting Questions He’s Been Ever Asked. Here are a few of the questions he has been asked.
1. Where do your thoughts come from?
“From the same place yours do. We’re both human, I think.”
2. Does God have a sense of humor?
“The question itself is hilarious. Yes. God laughs. At us. We are his greatest joke. Not to laugh at God’s great joke is to be really, really stupid. God wants to fill our mouths with laughter (Job 8:21), but we want to fill our mouths with arguments (Job 23:4). Kids with cancer who laugh at Ronald McDonald clowns recover faster. This could not be unless laughter puts us in contact with God, the source of life.”
3. Do you recommend meditation exercises?
“Yes. Very highly. Everyone should take at least fifteen minutes a day to practice what some call ‘mindfulness’ and others call ‘the relaxation response’. Everyone who has done this testifies that it works—that it is an eminently practical investment in time. The only problem is that you have to do it, not just think about doing it. So why don’t we do it constantly? Why don’t I? For the same reason we’re not saints.”
4. If you were pope, what is the first thing you would do?
“Resign. That’s the only way the Church and I would both survive.”
5. You said that Eucharistic Adoration is the first thing you would do to renew a parish. Why is the Eucharist so central?
“Because life is a Eucharist. The Eucharist is Jesus Christ himself, in total, both divinity and humanity, and in his humanity both soul and body, and in his body both flesh and blood. We adore it because it is not an “it”; it is a “he”, a Person, a divine Person. It is our God and our Savior himself, on person, coming to us in unimaginable love and unsurpasssble intimacy. That’s all.”
6. Why are children important?
“Because we don’t matter as much as we think we do, but children matter more than we think they do. In fact, if children don’t matter then none of us matter, because none of us came into the world except as children.”
7. How can we have joy when our lives are full of misery?
“We often ask, ‘Why do I have to do this job?’ If you change one word, you change the whole Big Picture. You also get the true quest. It should be: ‘Why do I get to do this job?’ Not ‘have to’ but ‘get to’.”
Dr. Kreeft gave another answer:
“Here’s another answer: Count your blessings—literally.
Get a blank book, and write in it ten new things to be thankful for every day for a year—five from your life and five from the world. And don’t forget meerkats. Three thousand six hundred fifty is really a very tiny number; both your life and your universe are much bigger than that.
These 3,650 things are gifts. Didn’t anyone very teach you to say ‘thank you’ for gifts?”
8. Can a cat be possessed by a demon?
“I don’t know. Why do you ask? Until you answer that question, please do not invite me into your house.
By the way, I love cats as well as dogs. God invented both.”
So, it looks like we can actually ask Peter Kreeft anything! To get the full answers to these and other great questions from philosophy, God and sexuality, to sin, morality, and surfing asked of Peter over the years, check out Ask Peter Kreeft: The 100 Most Interesting Questions He’s Been Ever Asked.
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