The tradition and Law of following Christ

“What ‘comes out’ of each one of us is important. This is how his kingdom grows in us and among us.”

“What really matters is the way we think, our inmost desires and longings. These lead to the way we behave. With dirty hands we can have a good relationship with God –but not with a dirty mind.”

“What is important in the reign of God is not people observing laws but people who are like God and try to be as God is, who have a compassionate heart as God does”

“The extraordinary discovery of the disciples was that the Law is, at the heart of it, a way of revealing God to us, that it held at its heart a mystery, a mystery which was further revealed in the person of Jesus”

“Christian life is an affair of the heart. The external gestures must be a expression of the love that springs from the heart, if not, it becomes pure hypocrisy.”

“Ultimately the moral law is the guide to relationship of mutual love between God and his people”

“Were it not for His Grace, this world would be even worse. It may be hard to see that. But for every evil that is done in this world, God performs infinitely more good.”

“If you listen to J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, you find music that builds on a perfect technique and brilliant structure with great inventiveness and colour. Not a bad image of what a Christian life might look like”

“Even when something bad happens, we can choose how we react. It’s all in the choices we make. But we must look to do so in the grace of God”

"Our beautiful opening prayer today embraces the theme running through all the readings"

“Then religion becomes corrupt. The solution is not to get rid of religion but to purify it so it plays its essential role of mediating God’s love and justice to us. And this is what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel.”

“True religion, as the Church understands it, is in essence the virtue of doing our duty to God. That certainly includes worshipping him, and includes being active members of Christ’s body, the Church. But it also includes striving for holiness”

“In order to understand the Law and its injunctions, we must understand ourselves. With a pure heart we can understand the law of God, behave correctly and offer true worship.”

“We need to speak words of encouragement to our world and to our age, that will bring a sense of hope to those without hope, and faith to those who lack faith, or who are discouraged in their lives, and ultimately of love to those who lack in love or being loved”

“The word of God today calls us to look at the habits, the patterns of behavior in our own life, and to realize the power that they have over us. Certain habits might indeed be good. But there are other habits that hold us back and lessen our ability to live.”

“The more we reverence something the more we surround it with laws. Laws are not oppressive. Laws are beautiful ways that we protect and enhance those things that we consider valuable.”

“We love the Law but we don't allow the Law to stifle the essence of the spiritual life”

“We can use our own knowledge of the spiritual moral laws to attack our brothers and sisters. That's when the law becomes not a means toward freedom but becomes a kind of weapon of aggression.”

“the danger is sometimes we become so obsessed with the external of the Law, the secondary expressions of it, that we forget the Law itself, the undergirding, the core of it. Don't make this mistake.”