Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.
God has willed that we should seek and find God's living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings.
If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation.
When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.
There is no kindness more cruel than the kindness which consigns another person to their sin.
Bless them that persecute you.' If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. Our enemies are the blessed of the Lord. Their curse can do us no harm. May their poverty be enriched with all the riches of God, with the blessing of Him whom they seek to oppose in vain. We are ready to endure their curses so long as they redound to their blessing.
What we are in ourselves, and what we owe to others makes us a complete whole.
The Lord stands above the new day, for God has made it. All restlessness, all worry, and anxiety flee before him.
The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies
A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.
True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers. In the last resort it is immaterial whether we pray in the open street or in the secrecy of our chambers, whether briefly or lenghtily, in the Litany of the Church, or with the sigh of one who knows not what he should pray for. True prayer does not depend either on the individual or the whole body of the faithful, but solely upon the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows our needs.
How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?
There is no worse sin than unbelief toward the gospel.
If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don't believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.
Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?
The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it is a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.
If you want my goodness to stay with you then serve your neighbour, for in him God comes to you himself; such a man sees in his neighbour the material and spiritual need he is called to meet.
The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.
The love for our enemies takes us along the way of the cross and into fellowship with the Crucified. The more we are driven along this road, the more certain is the victory of love over the enemy's hatred. For then it is not the disciple's own love, but the love of Jesus Christ alone, who for the sake of his enemies went to the cross and prayed for them as he hung there.
That fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than that fact that I will die.
Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected... Suffering and being rejected are not the same.
By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.
Just as God's love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not exist anywhere but in the worldly, in an infinite variety of concrete worldly action, and subject to misunderstanding and condemnation. Every attempt to portray a Christianity of 'pure' love purged of worldly 'impurities' is a false purism and perfectionism that scorns God's becoming human and falls prey to the fate of all ideologies. God was not too pure to enter the world.
The cross is suffering with Christ.
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