79 quotes
The Cross is not the terrible end of a pious happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.
Discipleship (1937)
Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.
Discipleship (1937)
In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility. For Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.
Discipleship (1937)
Death on the cross means to suffer and to die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic.
Discipleship (1937)
It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law.
Discipleship (1937)
Then there is the man with a conscience, who fights single-handedly against heavy odds in situations that call for a decision.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.
Costly Grace (1937)
The spirit would cast aside all deceit,
open his heart to the spirit he trusts,
and unite with him freely as one.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)
The cross is suffering with Christ.
Discipleship (1937)
The outcome of the Reformation was the victory, not of Luther's perception of grace in all its purity and costliness, but of the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.
Discipleship (1937)
Jesus offers his disciples a simple rule of thumb which will enable even the least sophisticated of them to tell whether his intercourse with others is on the right lines or not. All he need do is to say “I” instead of “Thou,” and put himself in the other man’s place.
Discipleship (1937)
Greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)
There is no abiding in and enjoying his visible glory here. Whoever recognizes the transfigured Jesus, whoever recognizes Jesus as God, must also immediately recognize Him as the crucified human being, and should hear him, obey him.
Meditations on the Cross (1996)
By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.
Discipleship (1937)
A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him. “Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand.” … The bushel may be the fear of men, or perhaps deliberate conformity to the world for some ulterior motive.
Discipleship (1937)
Distant or near,
in joy or in sorrow,
each in the other
sees his true helper
to brotherly freedom.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)
Catholic moral theology ... eliminates the unnaturalness of contraception, but replaces this with the unnaturalness of a marriage without bodily communion.
Ethics (1943)
Man seeks, in his manhood,
not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas,
but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness
and faithful in friendship,
making man free.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)
The "reasonable" people's failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naive lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has got out of joint.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)
There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated — in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)