Giussani and Barron: Our Ongoing Need for the Creativity of Mercy

1."....the miracle of mercy is the desire to change. And this implies acceptance, because otherwise it would not be desire for change, but pretension and presumption, and it would never become entreaty to an Other, it would not be trust in an Other. This desire defines the present, the instant of the man who is a sinner. The miracle is accepting oneself and entrusting oneself to an Other present so as to be changed, standing before Him and begging.

Entreaty is the whole expression of a man now, in the instant...."

Generating Traces in the History of the World,  Giussani, pp137, 138

2."A central Christian teaching that has flowed from the doctrine of the simple God is that of creation, or more precisely, creation ex nihilo, from nothing. According to this dogma, God continually creates and grounds the world, pouring being into it as a free gift. The things of the world do not stand over and against God, as if they were fundamentally independent of him; rather at every moment, they stand as sheer receptivity, literally as "nothing", accepting the grace which is their existence. In both classical and modern theologies of creation, the creator God  does not stand simply 'at the beginning of time' as if he brought the world into being and then simply left it to its own devices. On the contrary the God who is Being itself creates and renews the world unceasingly, pouring it out of himself in a great act of superabundant love."

Bridging the Great Divide, Barron, pp 241, 242