Author: ppadmin

In our age, we need more than almost anything else to restore the political dimensions of mystical vision and the visionary dimensions of political action. . . . The vision of God and the identification of oppression [go] together. Out of the sense of divine holiness and justice [come] a sense of the viciousness of injustice and sin. Knowledge of God [leads] to a deeper knowledge of human realities.

It is not sufficient to discuss the present crisis on the informational level alone. . . . We need to help each other process this information on an affective level, if we are to digest it on the cognitive level.

What we do with our lives outwardly, how well we care for others, is as much a part of meditation as what we do in the quietness and turning inward. In fact, Christian meditation that does not make a difference in the quality of one’s outer life is short-circuited. It may flare for a while, but unless it results in finding richer and more loving relationships with other human beings or in changing conditions in the world that cause human suffering, the chances are that an individual’s prayer activity will fizzle out.

We trust God when we are able to let go, despite our pain and fears, and leap into life.

It is in solitude that compassionate solidarity grows. In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart. In solitude our heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering people in a gesture of solidarity.

Liturgy is a microcosm of the work which God is doing in the world, and it is there that salvation is being worked out. Liturgy must never become an alternative world to that of social reality.

Paradoxically, this total Instruction [God’s Spirit moving in our lives] proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And he hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.