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.
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.
Principles are only tools in the hands of God they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.
Being free means “being free for the other,” because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free
Every wedding must be an occasion of joy that human beings can do such great things, that they have been given such immense freedom and power to take the helm in their life’s journey…
Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.
It is not your love that sustains the marriage,but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
Music… will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.
If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible.
Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.
We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.
Where a people prays, there is the hurch; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.
The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day.
I am sure of God’s hand and guidance… You must never doubt that I am thankful and glad to go the way which I am being led. My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.
My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.
As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins.
The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.
We should never argue with the devil about our sins, but we should speak about our sins only with Jesus.
Jesus does not impose intolerable restrictions on his disciples, he does not forbid them to look at anything, but bids them look on him. If they do that he knows that their gaze will always be pure, even when they look upon a woman.
Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.
The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ
We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer.
The author likens crisis, and particularly war, to stop motion photography in its capacity to make changes plain that are ordinarily too gradual to be seen.
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune.
Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master. Following Christ means passio passiva, suffering because we have to suffer.
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.
The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
It is a costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.
The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer it; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus’ hands.
The task is not to turn the world upside down but in a given place to do what, from the perspecive of reality, is necessary objectively and to really carry it out.
Jesus will not accept the common distinction between righteous indignation and unjustifiable anger. The disciple must be entirely innocent of anger, because anger is an offence against both God and his neighbour.
The Christian life is participation in the encounter of Christ with the world.
[Paul] has no intention to instruct the Christian community about the task and responsibility of government. His entire concern is with the responsibility of the Christian community towards the State.
We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.
May we be enabled to say “No” to sin and “Yes” to the sinner.
While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.
Any honours that come our way are only stolen from him to whom alone they really belong, the Lord who sent us.
In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.
In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.
The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.
Freedom for the Church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise, it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties.
The Church is the Church only when it exists for others…not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.
the world exercises dominion by force and Christ and Christians conquer by service.
Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.
But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father.
God loves his work and therefore wills to preserve it. Creation and preservation are two aspects of the one activity of God.
Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.
The temple of God is the holy people in Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the living temple of God and of the new humanity.
Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ.
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.
It is a wicked sophistry to justify the worldliness of the Church by the cross of Christ.
After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.
So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.
The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.
[Christ] is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.
Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. … We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.
Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to each of us.
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent
A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.
Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.
Not in the flight of ideas, but only in action is freedom. Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of the living.
If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
Action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility.
Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life time unenriched by experience creative endeavor enjoyment and suffering.
One’s task is not to turn the world upside down but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.
The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.
When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ then we pray correctly.
Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him whether the heart is full or empty.
Action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility.
It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.
God’s truth judges created things out of love, and Satan’s truth judges them out of envy and hatred.
Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.
We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.