Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We are called to be fruitful - not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.
Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder.
It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for 'showing up' and embodying the message.
We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son.
The animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren. All animals are fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect and they are as near to God as men are.
I believe that Jesus was both priest and poet. Imagine those powerful parables! My experience as a priest tells me it's not possible to reach the hearts of the congregants without a bit of poetry and storytelling.
Scandal often does as much harm to the listeners as to those who devise it, even if it were to do no other harm than disturb the mind, as it does, and give rise to temptations to speak or write about it to others.
Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.
Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.
I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization... No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.
The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be made concretely available to all.
Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.
We are still tossed about by the disturbances of this life, which is like a stormy sea, where those who are not attached to J[esus] C[hrist] and the duties of their state, as was our dear departed, are shipwrecked.
The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half.
The value for me being in a mainline tradition is history and memory, which is not just Christian tradition but denominational tradition, and characters, you know, with real distinct flavors of ways to be Christian.
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing...that is a friend who cares.
We are called to serve the common good by engaging with political and other institutions, even in our pluralistic society. We bring to that effort Christ's command to love and the grace that helps us live that love.
It is essential that our love be liberating, not possessive. We must at all times give those we love the freedom to be themselves. Love affirms the other as other. It does not possess and manipulate another as mine.
The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.
We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God.
If you say that a good reputation serves to benefit the neighbor more, I admit that. However, since it should be based on a good life, it is, therefore, preserved by the practice of virtue and not by human intrigue.
We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.
The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.
[A] truly humble spirit humbles itself as much amid honors as amid insults, acting like the honeybee which makes its honey equally as well from the dew that falls on the wormwood as from that which falls on the rose.
There is a vast difference between an Apostolic life and the solitude of the Carthusians. The latter is truly very holy but is not suited to those whom God has called to the former, which is in itself more excellent.
I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.
It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover there the small intimate voice saying: 'You are my Belived Child, on you my favor rests.'
I am very grateful that I am in touch with so many different church groups. I am always very moved by the fact that so many people - practically over the spectrum of the Christian world - are responding to my writing.
The Gospel must not be kept hidden because of fear or indifference. It was never meant to be hidden away in private. It has to be put on a stand so that people may see its light and give praise to our Heavenly Father.
God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no . . . Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet.
If you stay in the mainstream of life, you let in the suffering of the world that invariably enters all of our lives by the time we're in our middle years, when we've experienced a few deaths and read a few headlines.
If the Company takes my advice, it will always be preserved through this maxim, for if we are good, we will not lack any, and if we are not, we already have too many houses anyway, and can hardly fill the few we have.
Relapse happens, especially when you're dealing with folks who are frankly the least likely to succeed based on their own pasts and difficulties. We can work with the most likely to succeed. I'm not interested in that.
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.
O God and Lord, now the council condemns even Your own act and Your own law as heresy, since You Yourself did lay Your cause before Your Father as the just judge, as an example for us, whenever we are sorely oppressed.
Those in society who are in charge of schools must never forget that the parents have been appointed by God himself as the first and principal educators of their children and that their right is completely inalienable.
A paradox is a seeming contradiction, always demanding a change on the side of the observer. If we look at almost all things honestly we see everything has a character of paradox to it. Everything, including ourselves.
I believe artists should be able to step into other people's situations, contexts and cultures and work from there. If artists don't have that freedom, then, as someone has said, are we all writing our autobiographies?
With God's help, you will continue to succeed in your leadership and in your duties, because Our Lord's work is accomplished not so much by the multitude of workers as by the fidelity of the small number whom He calls.
When we receive with an entire and perfect resignation the afflictions which God sends us they become for us favors and benefits; because conformity to the will of God is a gain far superior to all temporal advantages.
What you are saying is true of those who want everything to give way to them, nothing to oppose them, everything to go their way, people to obey them without comment or delay and, in a manner of speaking, to be adored.
Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life...all of our life.
So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting.
Where are you getting your affection? Who's touching you? Who's holding you? Who makes you feel alive? Who says, "You are a beautiful person, you are the beloved of God, don't forget it"? That's an important discipline.
To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.
Walter, who had been in the lead all day, was the first to scramble up; a native Alaskan, he is the first human being to set foot upon the top of Alaska's great mountain, and he had well earned the lifelong distinction.
There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us.
[I]t is the maxim of the saints that when a matter has been decided in the presence of God after many prayers and the seeking of advice, we must reject and consider as a temptation whatever is suggested to the contrary.
Live, work, and travel with handicapped people, so I can stay close to them. But since I am often busy with many things, it's a constant struggle to keep the handicapped members of our community in the center of my life.