Author: ppadmin

Rose Marie Berger

A theology of joy requires the ability to see beyond the present moment. This sense of being seen by God becomes the tipping point for a theology of joy. It reminds us that we are creative agents within the long story that God is telling.

Alice Walker's novel Possessing the Secret of Joy bears this out in its dramatic conclusion. As Tashi Johnson goes to the firing squad, punishment for fighting the edicts of history, her sisters unfurl a banner before the soldiers can stop them. "Resistance is the secret of joy," it says in huge block letters. "There is a roar as if the world cracked open and I flew inside," says Tashi upon seeing the banner. "I am no more. And [am] satisfied."

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Gustavo Gutierrez

The incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation into littleness and service in the midst of overbearing power exercised by the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable. The Son of God was born into a little people, a nation of little importance by comparison with the powers of the time. He took flesh among the poor in a marginal area—namely, Galilee; he lived with the poor and emerged from among them to inaugurate a kingdom of love and justice. That is why many have trouble recognizing him. — Gustavo Gutierrez

Paul S. Minear

True love is embodied in the constant recognition of the goodness of God which makes the lover entirely unconscious of his own merit in loving. He loves the neighbor, not himself through his neighbor. He even forgets that he is a lover, so intent is he upon the needs of the beloved. He is so conscious of the source of love and the end of love that he confesses, “I can do nothing on my own authority."

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Thomas Merton

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. — Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. . . . It is in these that He hides Himself, for whom there is no room. — Thomas Merton

David Woodyard

[Frederic K.] Herzog has an important interpretation of the passage in John 3:1-21 where the issue of being born again appears. Conservatives have traditionally reduced the narrative to, “Have you found Jesus?” The individual is set apart and privatized. Herzog centers on, “Have you found your neighbor?” De-privatization occurs in community. To be born again is to enter into a new relationship with oneself, one that is corporate and in solidarity with others, especially the powerless and the poor. And it is a selfhood with open borders.

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Thomas R. Kelly

The heart is stretched through suffering, and enlarged. But O the agony of this enlarging of the heart, that one may be prepared to enter into the anguish of others!…The cross as dogma is painless speculation; the cross as lived suffering is anguish and glory. Yet God, out of the pattern of his own heart, has planted the cross along the road of holy obedience. And he enacts in the hearts of those he loves the miracle of willingness to welcome suffering and to know it for what it is—the final seal of his gracious love. — Thomas R. Kelly

Søren Kierkegaard

Christ willed to be the socially insignificant one. The fact that he descended from heaven to take upon himself the form of a servant is not an accidental something which now is to be thrust into the background and forgotten. No, every true follower of Christ must express existentially the very same thing – that insignificance and offense are inseparable from being a Christian. As soon as the least bit of worldly advantage is gained by preaching or following Christ, then the fox is in the chicken house. — Søren Kierkegaard

Oscar Romero

The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: how do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God. — Oscar Romero