QUOTATION: Division

Whenever I see a wall between Christians, I try to pull out a brick.

--Pope St. John XXIII

QUOTATION: Fairweather Followers

Jesus has many lovers of His kingdom of heaven, but He has few bearers of His Cross. Many desire His consolation, but few desire His tribulation. He finds many comrades in eating and drinking, but He finds few who will be with Him in His abstinence and fasting. All men would joy with Christ, but few will suffer anything for Christ. Many follow Him to the breaking of His bread, for their bodily refreshment, but will follow Him to drink a draft of the chalice of His Passion. Many honor His miracles, but few will follow the shame of His cross and His other ignominies. Many love Jesus as long as no adversity befalls them, and can praise and bless Him whenever they receive any benefits from Him, but if Jesus withdraws a little from them and forsakes them a bit, they soon fall into some great grumbling or excessive dejection or into open despair.

--Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

QUOTATION: The World Won't Let You Win

It is true, Philothea, that if we consent to laugh, play, or dance with the world in order to be agreeable, the world will be scandalized at us. If we do not, it will accuse us of hypocrisy or melancholy. If we dress well, the world will attribute it to some design; if we neglect our dress, it will impute it to meanness of heart. Our good humour will be termed a dissoluteness and our mortification sullenness. The world thus looks upon us with an evil eye, and we can never be agreeable to it. It exaggerates our imperfections and proclaims that they are sins, turns our venial sins into mortal and our sins of weakness into sins of malice.

--St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life

QUOTATION: On the Meaning of the Name 'Judas'

Judas means 'confessor.' Luke the Evangelist numbers both “Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot” among the twelve apostles. Since two of Christ’s disciples were given this same name and since there can be no meaningless symbol in the Christian mystery, I am convinced that the two Judases represent two distinct types of confessing Christians. The first, symbolized by Judas the son of James, perseveres in remaining faithful to Christ. The second type, however, after once believing and professing faith in Christ, then abandons him out of greed. He defects to the heretics and to the false priests of the Jews, that is, to counterfeit Christians, and (insofar as he is able) delivers Christ, the 'Word of truth,' over to them to be crucified and destroyed. This type of Christian is represented by Judas Iscariot, who 'went out to the chief priests' and agreed on a price for betraying Christ.

--Origen

QUOTATION: Christian Revolutionaries

Unless Christians are revolutionaries, they are not Christian.

--Pope Francis, Address to the Participants in the Ecclesial Convention of the Diocese of Rome, June 17, 2013.

QUOTATION: Fake Christians

He who is always calculating how much he must do to be just adequate and to be able to regard himself, after a few casuistical flicks, as a man with a nice, white shirt front, is still no Christian.

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: What Bothers Jesus

[Jesus] didn't complain of big sinners, He didn't complain of the people who do bad things. He complained of people like you and me, Christians, who should be known by that love for one another.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed

QUOTATION: Starchy Christians

We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea. No! We must become courageous Christians and go in search of the people who are the very flesh of Christ.

--Pope Francis, Address to the Lay Movements on Pentecost Vigil, May 18, 2013

QUOTATION: Christians

If Christians were powerless, the world would not feel the need to turn them into martyrs.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Foreword, How Not to Share Your Faith, by Mark Brumley.

QUOTATION: No Part-Time Christians

We cannot be Christians part-time. If Christ is at the center of our lives, he is present in all that we do.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: The Parish

Many people today are disoriented and lost in search of genuine fellowship. Often their lives are either too superficial or shattered by brokenness. Their work often is dehumanizing. They long for an experience of genuine encounter with others, for true fellowship. Well, is this not precisely the vocation of a parish? Are we not called to be a warm, brotherly family together? Are we not people united together in the household of God through our common life? Your parish is not mainly a structure, a geographical area or a building. The parish is first and foremost a community of the faithful. This is the task of a parish today: to be a community, to rediscover its identity as a community. You are not a Christian all by yourself. To be a Christian means to believe and to live one’s faith together with others. For we are all members of the body of Christ…. For fellowship to grow, the priest’s role is not enough, even though he plays an essential role. The commitment of all parishioners is needed. Each of their contributions is vital.

--Pope John Paul II, Draw Near to God

QUOTATION: Influence

Do not say: It is impossible for me to influence others. If you are a Christian, it is impossible for this not to happen.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: The Christian Paradox

The Christian experiences and lives a paradox. He possesses joy in sorrow, fulfillment in exile, light in darkness, peace in turmoil, consolation in dryness, contentment in pain and hope in desolation.

    —Mother Angelica, His Pain Like Mine

QUOTATION: The Nominal Christian

No decent person wants free love; no decent person wants race suicide. They live, therefore, not by principle but by a compromise between principles; they are in favour of divorce, but not of easy divorce, of small families but not of too small families. Consequently, they feel themselves responsible for the decision where exactly the line shall be drawn, within the generous limits which our legal system allows. They do not like the responsibility; who would? Who, in tampering with institutions so sacred as those of the family, would not like to feel that he had an authority behind him, a "warrant" from somewhere to ratify his behaviour? If only there were some great spiritual institution which would act, in these matters, as a sort of public conscience, guiding, from a higher point of vision, the moral choice made by the individual!

So, naturally, he feels; unfortunately, he does not feel that the views of any non-Catholic denomination are worth having, even if they are discoverable. He knows that the advice of an individual clergyman will be unofficial and inexpert. He knows, if he has followed the course of recent ecclesiastical deliberations, that representatives of Christian thought speak with an uncertain voice on such subjects. He respects our Church for having, at least, definite opinions and fixed rules. He respects it, although he disagrees with it. He thinks us far too severe in forbidding remarriage after divorce, in forbidding the artificial restriction of the family; but although he disagrees with us for the rules we have, he respects us for having rules. If only the people whom we value as advisers would give us the advice we want!

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Hypocrisy

It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.

--St. Jerome

QUOTATION: Bad Christians

When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity