Quotes from Richard R. Gaillardetz

If God is love, if God is gift given eternally, then our participation in the life of God happens not by escaping our everyday world, but by entering more deeply into the life of love and that paradoxical logic of gift in that we receive most richly only when we make "gifting" others a way of life.

The vitality of a human life can be measured by the intensity of one's desire. We know we are truly alive when we experience a drive for the "more" life. Human desire or longing is the source of our spiritual energy.

The Bible, the liturgy, creeds, doctrinal pronouncements and personal testimony—these are all simply diverse symbolic expressions of the one revelation of God in Christ.

You see, the point of the floodlights is not to draw attention to themselves but rather to illuminate the statue. So it is with all of the Church's symbolic expressions of God's revelation in general, and Church doctrine in particular. They do not exist to be the focus of our attention but rather to illuminate the beauty of God and God's saving action in our lives.

But there is a danger that we might begin to think of the encounter with God as if it were something radically distinct from our ordinary activities. In fact, we Catholics believe that in Jesus Christ, God rendered the whole of human existence holy. Because of Jesus we should expect to find the sacred not merely juxtaposed to our ordinary lives on a separate, supernatural plane, but in the midst of our ordinary human activities.

Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. Note that in this new commandment there is no explicit mention of God. This is typical of the Johannine tradition's perception of the radical union of love of God and love of neighbor.