Quotes from Robert Barron

The surest sign that God is alive in you is joy.

The ego-drama is nothing compared with the theo-drama. The fun begins when we let God write our stories.

God is a placebo for your own mortality.

When God went to the cross he made even death itself a place of hope.

Who had the biggest army in the ancient world? Caesar Augustus in Rome, and that is precisely how he was able to dominate that world. Nevertheless, his army is nothing compared to this angelic stratias that has lined up behind the new emperor. Remember Isaiah's prophesy that Yahweh would one day bare his mighty arm before all the nations. N.T. Wright has magnificently observed that the prophecy finds its fulfillment in the tiny arm of the baby Jesus coming out of his manger-crib.

In the, Dei Verbum, there is a great statement of Vatican II: The bible is the word of god but in the words of men.

But the true emperor, Luke insists, is not the one who feeds himself but who is willing to offer his life as food for the other. At the climax of his life, this child, come of age, would say to his friends, "This is my body, which will be given for you' do this in memory of me" (Lk 22:19).

So the Eucharist -- in its sumptuous liturgical setting, surrounded by music, art, the word of God, and the prayer of the community -- does more than sustain the divine life in us. It delights us, as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

When a person has fallen in love with God, both his ethical commitments and aesthetical pleasures become focused and satisfying. But when the religious is lost, ethics devolves into, first, a fussy legalism, and then is swallowed up completely by the lust for personal satisfaction.

But the true emperor, Luke is telling us, arrives vulnerable and exposed, because the good life is not about the protection of the ego, but rather about the willingness to become open to the other in love.

One of Barron's maxims is "The sure sign that God is alive in you is joy.

But above all, fight by your very holiness of life; fight by becoming the saint that God wants you to be; fight by encouraging a decent young man to become a priest; fight by doing a Holy Hour every day for the sanctification of the Church; fight by coming to Mass regularly; fight by evangelizing; fight by doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 Jn 4:20).

Only when you've had that experience of falling in love with something, Barron believes, will learning the rules that support it make sense. Otherwise, "rule-talk" is always going to seem like someone trying to control another, like an exercise in power rather than liberation to play the game well.

And when a politician abuses his office and uses his power for his own aggrandizement, Biblical people should rise up and protest with all of the insistence, courage, and eloquence of Nathan in the court of David.

The most oft-cited line of Newman's An Essay on the Development of Doctrine is situated in this context: "In a higher world it may be otherwise; but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." So indeed, Pope John's Newman-like image of the "flourishing garden of life" effectively holds off a stuffy traditionalism.

am persuaded that theology and spirituality are fundamentally one. The more we know about God, the more our lives change. In these articles and sermons, I try to show some practical implications of Christian doctrine. In section five, "The Way of Nonviolence," I have brought together articles that center around the theme of

Hitler was one of the shrewdest manipulators of the scapegoating mechanism. He brought the deeply divided German nation of the 1930s together precisely by assigning the Jews as a scapegoat for the country's economic, political, and cultural woes.

desacralizing

scapegoaters, but rather on the side of the scapegoated victim.

But in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this stunning truth is revealed: God is not on the side of the

The Soul's Upward Yearning by Fr. Robert Spitzer, the intergalactically smart Jesuit who once served as president of Gonzaga University and who now directs the Magis Center on matters of faith, reason, and science,

The Christified person knows that his life is not finally about him but about God; the Eucharistized person understands that her treasure is to be found above and not below. Wealth, pleasure, power, honor, success, titles, degrees, even friendships and family connections are all relativized as the high adventure of life with God opens up. The eternalized person can say with Paul, "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me," and "We have here no lasting city.

People in oppressive political situations are so afraid to give voice to their convictions that they lose confidence in the very category of truth and in the power of speech to bring clarity and liberation.