Category Archives: quotes

Each One of Us

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From “A Thomas Merton Reader,” edited by Thomas P. McDonnell.
Background – Thomas Merton had just arrived at Gethsemane, the Trappist monetary in Kentucky, as a postulant.

“In any case, the Father Abbott turned to us with just as much ease and facility as if he had nothing else whatever to do but to give the first words of advise to two postulants leaving the world to become Trappists.
“‘Each one of you,’ he said, ‘will make the community either better or worse. Everything you do will have an influence upon others. It can be a good influence or a bad one. It all depends on you. Our Lord will never refuse you grace…'” (p. 143)

In all of our communities, we must make a decision of whether we will be a good influence or a bad one, whether we will make the place we find ourselves better or worse. Our dispositions, our attitude, our words along with our actions will all contribute to whether we are a “smell of life” or a “smell of death.”
Which will it be? In all of our politicking, moralizing, and pontificating, what will it be? Are we an element that uplifts and encourages or an element that speeds the decent into banality, superficiality, hypocrisy, and idiocy?
Despite our person foibles and problems, we still have the ability to decide! Which will it be? How will we be known?

As timely today as then

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Could there be anything more timely, even if it was written millennia ago?
Wisdom of Solomon 2:1-11

For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves,
‘Short and sorrowful is our life,
and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end,
and no one has been known to return from Hades.
For we were born by mere chance,
and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been,
for the breath in our nostrils is smoke,
and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts;
when it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes,
and the spirit will dissolve like empty air.
Our name will be forgotten in time,
and no one will remember our works;
our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud,
and be scattered like mist
that is chased by the rays of the sun
and overcome by its heat.
For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow,
and there is no return from our death,
because it is sealed up and no one turns back.
‘Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist,
and make use of the creation to the full as in youth.
Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes,
and let no flower of spring pass us by.
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.
Let none of us fail to share in our revelry;
everywhere let us leave signs of enjoyment,
because this is our portion, and this our lot.
Let us oppress the righteous poor man;
let us not spare the widow
or regard the grey hairs of the aged.
But let our might be our law of right,
for what is weak proves itself to be useless.

There is truly nothing new under the sun!

Scheming Swindlers

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“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard

Quotes: The work of theology

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“Theology is not simply reiteration of what has been or is currently believed and practiced by a community of faith. It is a quest for truth, and that presupposes that the proclamation and practice of the community of faith are always in need of examination and reform. When this responsibility for critical reflection is neglected or relegated to a merely ornamental role the faith of the community is invariably threatened by shallowness, arrogance, or ossification. The upsurge in fundamentalism in Christianity and Islam in recent years may yet persuade even the cultured despisers of religion, for good or for ill, religious commitment continues to exercise immense influence on human life.”
Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding

Another Athanasius quote

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Anthanasius, in On the Incarnation:

“But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things – namely a law and a place. He sat them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their origional innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but dying outside of it, continue in death and corruption. This is what holy scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, ‘Of every tree in the Garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in that day that ye do eat, thou shalt surely die.’ [Gen. 2:16f] ‘Ye shall surely die…’ – not just die only, but remain in a state of death and corruption.”

Was the plan all along that man and woman would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and learn what it means to face the consequences of one’s actions – thus being truly able to choose competently between one thing and another? Was this all a part of learning what it meant to be made in the very image of God, who can create freely and choose freely? Or, did we truly thwart God’s will for us as His creation, defying His good will and His command?

Quote from Stephen Colbert

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Here is a quote from Stephen Colbert:

“I love my church, and I’m a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals who were very devout. I was raised to believe that you could question the church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That’s totally different from the Word, the blood, the body, and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this earth.”
– Stephen Colbert, of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Source: TimeOut New York via SoJo e-mail updates
For those who may not know, Stephen Colbert is a talk-news satirist and “anchor” of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” This show, and Colbert, along with the “Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, are both quite influential with younger people. I love both shows!

Living an Illusion

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Living the Collective Illusions
Thomas Merton

People are constantly trying to use you to help them create the particular illusions by which they live. This is particularly true of the collective illusions which sometimes are accepted as ideologies. You must renounce and sacrifice the approval that is only a bribe enlisting your support of a collective illusion. You must not allow yourself to be represented as someone in whom a few of the favorite daydreams of the public have come true. You must be willing, if necessary, to become a disturbing and therefore an undesired person, one who is not wanted because he upsets the general dream.

My source: Inward/Outward
Their source: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Oft used quote…

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What length will people go?


“Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience …. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason … You start being ‘kind’ to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which they in fact had a right to refuse, and finally kindnesses which no one but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties.”

– C.S. Lewis

Tourists or pilgrims? – A quote

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Each of us, what are we? Tourists or pilgrims?

Only the walker who sets out toward ultimate things is a pilgrim. In this lies the terrible difference between tourist and pilgrim. The tourist travels just as far, sometimes with great zeal and courage, gathering up acquisitions (a string of adventures, a wondrous tale or two) and returns the same person as the one who departed. There is something inexpressibly sad in the clutter of belongings the tourist unpacks back at home. The pilgrim is different. The pilgrim resolves that the one who returns will not be the same person as the one who set out.
Andrew Schelling