It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else.
The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.
A saint is Christ's bride, totally attached, faithful, dependent. A saint is also totally independent, detached from idols and from other husbands... A saint is higher than anyone else in the world. A saint is the real mountain climber. A saint is also lower than anyone else in the world. As with water, he flows to the lowest places - like Calcutta.
If the churches ever did reunite, it would have to be into something that was as sacramental and liturgical and authoritative as the Roman Catholic Church and as protesting against abuses and as much focused on the individual in his direct relationship with Christ as the Evangelicals, as charismatic as the Pentecostals, as missionary-minded as the old mainline denominations, as focused on holiness as the Methodists or the Quakers, as committed to the social aspects of the Gospel as the social activists, as Biblical as fundamentalists, and as mystical as the Eastern Orthodox.
An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer's tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic - probably more. The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: "What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say.
When I think how much my Protestant brothers and sisters are missing in not having Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist; when I kneel before the Eucharist and realize I am as truly in Christ's presence as the apostles were but that my Protestant brothers and sisters don't know that, don't believe that - I at first feel a terrible gap between myself and them. What a tremendous thing they are missing!
Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature.
True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross.
Suffering is not blessed because it is suffering but because it is [Christ's]. Suffering is not the context that explains the cross; the cross is the context that explains suffering.
Christ transforms the meaning and value of suffering from something to be feared or at best endured into something redemptive [and transformative].
Since we are [Christ's] body, we too are the bread that is broken for others. Our failures help heal other lives; our very tears help wipe away tears; our being hated helps those we love.
Faith is the root, the necessary beginning. Hope is the stem, the energy that makes the plant grow. Love is the fruit, the flower, the visible product, the bottom line. The plant of our new life in Christ is one; the life of God comes into us by faith, through us by hope, and out of us by the works of love.
God is a person [in Christ]. A person can be known only by personal understanding, not impersonal understanding. Personal understanding takes place through love, caring, willingness, intimacy, and relationship.
The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life-until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.
If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.
Americans' deepest religion is often equality. The notion that Christ alone is God-superior, authoritative, supernatural-and that Christ's teaching and person is far greater than Buddha's, or Muhammad's, or Moses's, no matter how much great and good wisdom may be contained in those others, is scandalous.
Saints have to be tough as well as tender because saints are like Christ, and Christ was the toughest and the tenderest man who ever lived.
The most compelling evidence for God's existence is Christ. If God does not exist, then Christ was the biggest fool who ever lived.
The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: "What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say."
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