Seeing and Hearing with Joy

“Let us pause this week to notice the prophets of nonviolence in our world, to recognize the leadership of women, and see the signs of God with us, where nonviolence has led to peace with justice.”

“Seeing is no simple matter. We don’t always see what is to be seen. We don’t always understand what we see, to the point where we don’t see it at all. Good and clear vision requires good and clear speech. Unlike God, not everything we say is true.”

“Everyone in the world knows that Christmas is coming. That’s wonderful. Many, however, may not know very much about Christ.”

“Because the one I seek is right here in our midst. What joy.”

“Jesus doesn’t absolve us from addressing structural injustices; rather, he frees us from becoming paralyzed by them: we become free to do something, for we cannot do everything, and do it with great love”

“It’s hard to wait for salvation, especially when everything around you seems to be getting worse, not better...Isaiah and John the Baptist. Together, these two prophets teach us how to wait with faith and courage, even when the winds of history seem to be thrashing us”

“Lord, keep coming. Keep coming through me. Keep coming through your church. Help us to bring healing and joy”

“God’s revelation is gradual but sure. John couldn’t have had a total knowledge of the identity of Jesus because that would have limited his Divine Nature. This limitation reveals the humanity of John present in all. God remains a mystery for John, for me and for you.”

“let us help the “blind” persons – including ourselves – to see that arrogance, apathy, and greed, the roots of environmental evil, have caused us to ignore the need to change from a consumerist to a zero-waste lifestyle”

“The coming of Jesus reveals to us a God who, yes, does hold us to high standards, and who will be our judge, but who beyond that judgment holds out to the faithful the promise of a new world where evil and iniquity are swept aside and only holiness and joy abound”

“Jesus, being God, does everything at its right time. There is a process for everything, and Jesus, more than anyone needed to steep a little, so to speak”

“May we each come to the understanding that the minority groups we so often marginalize are not the ones in need of healing for the Kingdom to come here on earth. It is those of us in the majority that need to be healed so we may learn to welcome the many images of God.”

“There are lots of things in our lives that we don’t want to admit are sinful, and sometimes when we look at the extent of our sinfulness we can become disheartened, and think that repentance is pointless. It is, however, necessary if we desire to receive our Saviour.”

“No one is too different or too diverse for Jesus. As seen in the Gospels, Jesus welcomes diversity.”

“We are able to see and hear anew, because the arrival of God allows all to see and hear. The sign is what it signifies; God does what he shows us – open our senses to what is real.”

“They never find it, never see it, who cannot look beyond the limits of their limited expectations. God is always greater than our imagination. Or were you expecting something or someone less this Advent?”

“What is so marvellous about Jesus is not so much that he is God, but that he is God who has taken to himself our human nature. He has become a man whom we can get to know.”

“It is a mark of wisdom to know how to give the most appropriate answer to a question, so that listeners are really given the information they need to know.”

“We must let go of what we were expecting and accept what has been given. We must forget the things we cannot have and claim the good things in our life that are ours. If we can do that, if we can claim the blessings that God has indeed given us, we will find Christ. And if we find Christ, we will find Christmas.”

“Your expectation of the Lord doesn't make you passive, it draws you up out of yourself in a active anticipation”

“Jesus' forgiveness of our sins...Knits God's creation back together, restores us to life. And so in this Advent season as Christmas approaches can I recommend this, to all of us, it's to present our infirmities and weaknesses to the Lord. Physical, yes, but spiritual maybe more importantly.”

“Jesus comes to give sight to blind eyes. Well, one of the principal effects of the loss of the divine life is spiritual blindness.”

“Hope is the theological virtue, it comes from the inrushing of grace, the virtue by which our lives are ordered towards heaven and things of heaven as our ultimate good”

“Sometimes it is only through the rigors of the desert that we come to flower as the servants of God. We got to go through the desert time. Religiously intentional people do it in a very conscious way, most of us have to be dragged through it. It's the only path to the full flowering of the self.”

“Christianity in a certain sense is a religion of fulfillment, the Lord has come, the Incarnation, Redemption have taken place, it's happened. But in another sense, Christianity is permanently a religion of waiting because we wait in joyful hope for the second coming of the Lord.”