Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.
The Christian life is participation in the encounter of Christ with the world.
God is never in the world in any way except in his absolute transcendence of it.
Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.
We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.
Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.
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
We ought not to be in too much of a hurry here to speak piously of God’s will and guidance. It is obvious, and it should not be ignored, that it is your own very human wills that are at work here, celebrating their triumph; the course that you are taking at the outset is one that you have chosen for yourselves…
Man no longer lives in the beginning-he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know them
Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me.
It is a wicked sophistry to justify the worldliness of the Church by the cross of Christ.
Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ.
If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.
From now on there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.
It is not your love that sustains the marriage,
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
Events cast their shadows ahead; before a harsh winter, wild animals grow thicker fur, and the beaver puts on a thicker layer of fat. What kind of times and what sort of tasks can lie ahead for a generation that must think so harshly, even at such a young age, in order to survive?
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