Jesus Quotes - Page 246

Thus, the apostles' adventure began as a gathering of persons who open to one another reciprocally. A direct knowledge of the Teacher began for the disciples. They saw where he lived and began to know him. They would not have to be heralds of an idea, but witnesses of a person. Before being sent to evangelize, they would have to "be" with Jesus (cf. Mark 3:14), establishing a personal relationship with him. With this foundation, evangelization is no more than a proclamation of what has been experienced and an invitation to enter into the mystery of communion with Christ (cf. 1 John 13).

Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom

Faith is above all a personal, intimate encounter with Jesus, and to experience [His] closeness, [His] friendship, [His] Love; only in this way does one learn to know [Him] ever more, and to love and follow [Him] ever more. May this happen to each one of us.

The Church is not an association that wishes to promote a certain cause. It is not about a cause. It is about the person of Jesus Christ.

The fundamental task of the evangelization of culture is the challenge to make God visible in the human face of Jesus.

Most observers understand the difference between a committed Christian who accepts Jesus as a model for living and a 'cultural Christian' who happens to live in a nation with a Christian heritage. Most Muslims do not.

The camera follows a young woman as she makes her way through the stands to an area set aside for repentance and conversion. But Jesus' stories imply that far more may be going on out there: beyond that stadium scene, in a place concealed from all camera lenses, a great party has erupted, a gigantic celebration in the unseen world.

Whoever desires to remain faithful to Jesus must communicate faith as he did, not by compelling assent but by presenting it as a true answer to basic thirst. Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.

If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.

[...]women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

Charles Williams has said of the Lord's Prayer, "No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause." What makes the 'as' so terrifying? The fact that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving-ness of fellow human beings. Jesus' next remark could not be more explicit: 'If you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.'

Never do I see Jesus lecturing people on the need to accept blindness or lameness as an expression of God's secret will; rather, he healed them.

When he lived on earth, [Jesus] surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren.

We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change.

The Old Testament anticipates [Jesus] all the way through.

Jesus was a master of grace: he attracted sinners and moral outcasts even as he offended the religious and responsible people of his day.

What you and I think about Jesus and how we respond to Him will determine our destiny for all eternity.

Grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us. Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, "Be good." Jesus' stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, "Help!"

He's [Jesus] the most fascinating character in history, really - the character who's made more difference to the world than anyone since him. I daresay that Muslims would say Muhammad was that character, but I think Jesus had a sort of 600-year start on him.

The crucifixion saved him [Jesus]. He never had to deal with the fact that the kingdom of God wasn't ever going to come. His disciples, of course, had to deal with it, and little by little they had to realize that it's a metaphorical thing. Well, that's not what Jesus meant. I'm fairly sure he meant it literally. But he must have been the most fascinating man.

If we all gave all our goods to the poor, the church would fall apart. If we all hated our father and mother, as Jesus told us to, there'd be an end of the church's emphasis on the family as being the one important thing holding the whole society together. There are all sorts of ways in which the church's teachings contradict directly what Jesus says in the Gospel.

There is something new in the air. There is, there is a - a hunger for an open, non-dogmatic, form of Christian faith and practice, which adapts itself to a rapidly changing world; and speaks to that world the message of Jesus Christ. And a freedom to rediscover some of the language of the tradition now that's it's not handed down to us, you know, with a strict framework of doctrinal, fixed structures.

We walked out of this library building downtown, just on our way to lunch, and I was walking a few steps behind Travolta, and when he opened the door, it was as if Jesus had just walked out into the commons.

I'm not a practicing Catholic now. I didn't like what the church was doing with what Jesus had said, in a way. But I wouldn't say I'm not religious.