A grieving son was given the opportunity to write parting words on a card at his mother’s funeral. He quoted the verse, “And morning came and Jesus was standing on the shore.
When the range and depth of the suffering of others and what we do to one another no longer bothers us, nor moves us to remedy the situation and stop the pain, then we have lost a part of our own humanity, our own soul.
The essence of a mature human being in religious terms is the ability to see, to be aware of others’ suffering and to be touched by it.
Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross.
It is unbelievable the amount of hate the human body can sustain before it begins to break.
Any serious reading of the Bible means personal involvement in it, not symbol mental agreement with abstract propositions. And involvement is dangerous, because it leaves one open to unforeseen conclusions.
We must remember that all stations are as much about life as they are obviously about death. All is redeemed. All is grist for transformation and glory.
What God did for Jesus in standing up for Him, standing behind Him in life and in death, and in standing in communion and solidarity with Him, the Father also does for us, here and now, in our lives.
Conversion, constant conversion, is the message of the Gospel.
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrusts in turn brings forth war.
Jesus enters the garden, in preparation, intending to face his fears by facing his God, his Father, His greatest fear is to offend his Father, to disobey his own calling, its integrity, and the word of God on his life.
The cross is a crisis point for all societies which seek to produce me in and women of quiescence, men and women who are trained to give unquestioning, uncritical obedience to worldly powers and not to Christ.
Sometimes living with memory, with the thought of what friends, those who shared your soul and dreams, will do to you is worse than taking a bullet or having someone stab your flesh. There is a way of bleeding from one’s soul.
Whenever we use our religion, as individuals, or as groups within the church, to act in tandem with political and economic groups that arrest the voice of truth or destroy others, then we are Judas.