Quotes About Christ

As the sacramental sign is the inanimate medium of grace, 16 so the minister is its animate instrument in the hands of Christ.

St. Thomas, following his master Albert, proves the necessity of a right intention on the part of the minister from the proposition that every free instru mental cause must voluntarily accommodate itself to the principal cause,— in this case Christ, the author and chief administrator of the Sacraments. " There is required on the part of the minister that intention by which he subjects himself to the principal agent, i. e. intends to do what Christ does and the Church.

Christ, in whom godhead and manhood are so inti mately united, is as it were a living Sacrament — the personal and visible embodiment of uncreated grace. Similarly His Church, as the mystical image of the Hypostatic Union, is the visible medium of supernatural life, and therefore preeminently a sacramental institu tion.

An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishments which a penitent, whose sins are forgiven, has yet to undergo, either here or in purgatory; this remission is granted by the Church, through the power of the keys, from the treasury of the superabundant merits of Christ and His saints.

Augustine observes: " The womb does not repeat its births," 34 and with the latter analogy in mind St. Chrysostom says: " As there is no second crucifixion for Christ, so there can be no such a thing as rebaptism." 35

All history is incomprehensible without Christ.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

The well-known biblical story of the Magi who journey to find the Christ child and to bring gifts offers an emblematic story of knowing. They are not called wise men for nothing! nor is it a meaningless accident that we use the word epiphany in referring to a moment of insight. Epiphany is the name of the church season in which we celebrate God's revealing himself to these Gentiles--and to us.

So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.

The power that the world acknowledges comes out of the mouth of a gun; the power that the person of faith respects comes from the mouth of Christ.

I want to develop discernments that say an unapologetic "no" to ways that violate the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

God reveals himself, that is, in creation and in Christ, in ways we can see and hear and touch and taste, in place and person. Beauty is the term we apply to these hints of transcendence, these perceptions that there is more going on here than we can account for. And that is how we come to identify as apostles of the gospel the men and women and, yes, children, who use words and images and sounds and textures to wake us up to beauty latent and implicit all around us.

I enter a room now not wondering what I am going to do or say, but what the risen Christ has already done, already said. I come in on a story that is in progress, something that is resurrection, already going on. Sometimes I can clarify a word, sharpen a feeling, help recover an essential piece of memory, but always dealing with what the risen Christ has already set in motion, already brought into being.

It was included in the Songs of Ascents to develop just those aspects of life under God and in Christ which my sometime friend Kelly lacked and which we all need.

Treating souls for whom Christ died as numbers or projects or resources seemed to me something like a sin against the Holy Spirit.

It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.

The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.

It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and our speaking to him (prayer) that the Holy Spirit uses to form the life of Christ in us.

We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.

Backslider was a basic word in the religious vocabulary I learned as I grew up. Exempla were on display throughout the town: people who had made a commitment of faith to our Lord, had been active in our little church but had lost their footing on the ascent to Christ and backslid.

He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus talks and prays and takes up instead the rhetoric of smiling salesmanship or vicious invective.