Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become ‘one body’, completely joined in a single existence. |
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Just as Eve brought death into the world through her fall, and through her succumbing to Satan, so too Mary becomes the new Eve who brings life into the world through her ‘yes’ to God. This imagery of Mary as the new Eve goes all the way back to the Old Testament. She is the new woman, who will overcome the serpent through her ‘yes’ to God and through the coming of her Son, the Messiah. |
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The Church is like the moon. She does not shine with her own light but reflects the light of Christ. Indeed, just as the moon without the sun is dark, opaque, and invisible, so too is the Church if she separates herself from Christ, true God and true man. |
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There is never any more authentic relation with God than in an encounter with the poor. |
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Jesus founded the Church to be his bride. It’s from Jesus that we get the great commandments of love of God and neighbor. It is Jesus who instituted the Sacraments. Jesus who taught us how to pray. Jesus who, especially in the Blessed Sacrament, inspires holiness in our own day. |
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Despite the loss of the ancient Christian holy places to Islam in the crusades, despite the heresies that threatened to engulf Christendom and led the inquisitions, and despite the many divisions among Christians that we have inherited from the movement ironically called the Reformation, our Church remains one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. |
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In the Church’s beginning, there were no Bibles, no missals, no hymnals. The Apostles would summarize the saving events of Jesus’ life, often in short, skeletal sermons—summaries of the Gospel—that came to be known as the ‘rule of faith.’ . . . The creed was the people’s gateway to the graced transformation made possible by the sacraments of initiation. |
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From the creed, then, we learn that all creation is caught up in a drama that sweeps from the beginning of time to its end. There is a narrative arc to the history not only of humanity, but of the cosmos—‘all things visible and invisible.’ The cast of this drama includes everyone alive, everyone who ever lived, and everyone who will live. All will rise and be judged for the actions and omissions, small and great, of their everyday lives. |
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That line had been going up to that Altar for 2,000 years, and not just here but it was going on all around the world in Japanese and Russian and Hebrew. All around the world people were going up and taking part of the Eucharist, and being part of this Church that we didn’t even know existed except as an enemy. |
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But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love, and it is fear. |
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I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I find it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience. |
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The Kingdom I speak of, that I live for, is like the water out in the sea. Man lives for that cup of water that slips through His fingers, but those that follow Jesus Christ live for that endless expanse of sea. |
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The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale. |
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Let peace be with you, for we live in the world but we do not wage war as the world does. Peace begins with you. Love is the only way. |
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The modern world needs, above all things else, the restoration of the image of man. Modern politics, from monopolistic capitalism through socialism to communism, is a destruction of the image of man. Capitalism made man a ‘hand’ whose business it was to produce wealth for the employer; communism made man a ‘tool’ without a soul, without freedom, without rights, whose task it was to make money for the state. Communism, from an economic point of view, is rotted capitalism. Freudianism reduced the Divine image of man to a sex organ, which explained his mental processes, his taboos, his religion, his God, and his super-ego. Modern education denied, first, that he had a soul, then, that he had a mind, finally, that he had a consciousness...The surcease from the tragedy can come only from the restoration of the spiritual image of man, as a creature made to the image and likeness of God and destined one day, through the human will in cooperation with God’s grace, to become a child of God and an heir of the Kingdom of Heaven. |
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The Blessed Mother understands our cries and worries and knows them better than we know ourselves. As the baby needs the doctor, so the Blessed Mother knows we need her Divine Son. |
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When you read the New Testament in light of the Old, and the Old as fulfilled in the New, then you discover that Jesus wasn’t going about just establishing novelties. It wasn’t all innovation. It was fulfillment and transformation of the Passover of the Old into the Eucharist of the New, circumcision of the Old becomes Baptism in the New, and that cleanses us far more. Gradually I began to open my mind and, even a little bit, my heart to the possibility that maybe the New Testament is built upon the Old more than I reckoned on. |
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What does Adam say? “The woman…” He has already begun to pass the buck. Not, “Yes I ate.” It’s almost as though the Lord was trying to coax an admission out of him. But Adam doesn’t stop there because then he adds: “The woman whom you gave to be with me. Some helper she turned out to be!” The blame game enters in the second inning. First we blame our spouse, who just doesn’t understand. Then we blame God, who gave us our heredity, our environment, our spouse, our parents, our siblings, and so much else. And usually we never even bother to tell ourselves what we’re doing. It’s almost subsconscious. We blame God and never really even tell God that’s what we’re doing because we don’t really fear offending God our Father; we fear getting caught because we fear the punishment. |
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Mary points us to Jesus from the cross; son, behold your mother. Son, John, who represents us, receive your mother. It’s an opening. Our journey of faith is a continual opening for all that God has to give us. |
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The people in the parks, the alcoholics, the homeless, they are looking at you. Do not be those who look and do not see. Look and see. |
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