[apersonwho]

At times our media culture and some intellectual circles convey a marked scepticism with regard to the Church’s message, along with a certain cynicism. As a consequence, many pastoral workers, although they pray, develop a sort of inferiority complex which leads them to relativize or conceal their Christian identity and convictions. This produces a vicious circle. They end up being unhappy with who they are and what they do; they do not identify with their mission of evangelization and this weakens their commitment. They end up stifling the joy of mission with a kind of obsession about being like everyone else and possessing what everyone else possesses. Their work of evangelization thus becomes forced, and they devote little energy and very limited time to it.

Pope Francis, from Evangelii Gaudium (Paragraph 79)

[lolmythesis]

After reading lots of Augustine, I found out that the will is free but not meta-free and now I can't decide whether I chose to write this thesis or not.

Philosophy, Louisiana State University

[simplyorthodox]

May Saint Luke of Simferopol and Crimea, a beloved Saint of all the Orthodox Christians, pray for peace in Ukraine and for world peace!

[apersonwho]

From Dust to Dust

Dust cakes the tread of our shoes

and collects on framed pictures that sit gathered like a family on the mantle.

When its presence becomes unbearable we sweep it into bins

and pour it into bags

and send it away in the trash.

We do not go on forever.

  But God saw fit to reach down into this dust, this miserable dust, and blow the air from his chest into a new creation.

And so, we were born; A gust of wind from Divine lungs blended inseparably with dirt and it was good.

It was very good.

[apersonwho]

This is why Christ descended into the underworld, with its imperishable prison bars: to shatter the doors of bronze and break the bars of iron and, from decay, to raise our life to himself by giving us freedom in place of servitude.

St. Athanasius of Antioch 

Found in the Catholic Office of the Dead

[reasonsmysoniscrying]

"He met Pope Francis." Submitted By: Jessica D. (via Buzzfeed)

[apersonwho]

Things conducive to the soul’s salvation are more accessible than other things, while soul-destroying things are harder to come by. For example, poverty, which anyone can experience, is conducive to the soul’s salvation; while riches, which are not simply at our command, are generally a hindrance.

St. Peter of Damaskos A Treasury of Divine Knowledge

[apersonwho]

Clinging to the one who saturates us with grace, the longing soul becomes a lover. But the longing is not a once-satisfied longing. The longing and the freed servitude are intermingled.

Dr. Amy Laura Hall - Love: A Kinship of Affliction and Redemption

[apersonwho]

The proud are without pity, because they despise others, and think them wicked, so that they account them as suffering deservedly whatever they suffer.

St. Thomas Aquinas

[apersonwho]

Prior to Constantine it took exceptional conviction to be a Christian... Before Constantine, Christians assumed as a matter of faith that God was governing history even in the person of the emperor, but they knew that God was present in the church. After the Constantinian establishment, Christians knew that God was governing the world in Constantine, but they had to take it on faith that within the nominally Christian mass there was a community of true believers. No longer could being a Christian be identified with church membership, since "Christians" in the church had not chosen to follow Christ.

Stanley Hauerwas - Matthew: Brazos Commentary Series

[popeingaround]

Pope John Paul II praying before pontificating all over the slopes.

[apersonwho]

Our God and King is good, transcendently good and all-good.

St. John Climacus

The opening words of The Ladder of Divine Ascent 

[apersonwho]

Jesus Christ is not a proposition, not a theological concept which exists merely in our heads. He is an event of liberation, a happening in the lives of oppressed people struggling for political freedom. Therefore, to know him is to encounter him in the history of the weak and the helpless.

James Cone, God of the Oppressed

[apersonwho]

Truth cannot be separated from the people's struggle and the hopes and dreams that arise from that struggle. Truth is that transcendent reality, disclosed in the people's historical struggle for liberation, which enables them to know that their fight for freedom is not futile.

James Cone God of the Oppressed

[apersonwho]

There have always been radio waves bringing messages to us from distant stars. Only the development of radio technology has empowered us to receive those signals. The Bible was always a liberation storybook: now we are ready to read it that way.

John Howard Yoder The Authority of Tradition in From Christ to the World

[apersonwho]

All men are made in God's image; but to be in His likeness is granted only to those who through great love have brought their own freedom into subjection to God.

St. Diadochos of Photiki On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination

[apersonwho]

No virtue makes flesh-bound man so like a spiritual angel as does self-restraint, for it enables those still living on earth to become, as the Apostle says, 'citizens of heaven.'

St. John Cassian On the Eight Vices