Volume 5 Issue 5 ~~May 29, 2000
Food for Thought
The symphony needs each note
The book needs each word
The house needs each brick
The ocean needs each drop of water
The harvest needs each grain of wheat
The whole of humanity needs you
as and where you are
You are unique
No one can take your place.
-Michel Quoist The Breath of Love, p.31
[F]aith is concerned with God's will, not with moving mountains. -New Oxford Annotated Bible
The golden age cannot be built on leaden instincts..,[r]eligion must be internalised and spiritualised...[then one's] will becomes one with the will of God and [one's food] and drink is to do that will. -John Paterson, Peake's Commentary on the Bible p556
[T]he Spirit is the foundation of faith that moves those who are saved beyond themselves and into the vulnerability of life lived for God and for others. Marion Soards, New Internatinoal Biblical Commentary v. 7, p. 55
Be ready to defend your hope as a Christian, but do so with gentleness and reverence! -New Oxford Annotated Bible
We have to stretch out a hand to others
before real friendship can exist
We have to lead the struggle for justice on to love
before freedom can begin to live.
-Michel Quoist The Breath of Love, p.79
I'd like you to note that Paul wrote Romans in the city of Corinth where the prevailing religion was the worship of Aphrodite. Aphrodite was a hermaphrodite with both male and female sexual organs and in the worship of Aphrodite people played the role of the opposite gender and engaged in sexual orgies with same sex prostitutes who were available in the temple. It was against these orgies that Paul wrote in the first chapter of Romans. There is an obvious connection between idolatry and homosexual practices in Romans one and what Paul says here cannot be applied to the kind of relationships created by loving homosexual partners who are making a lifetime monogamous commitment to each other.
I don't think that [using Romans 1:26f to condem
homosexual activity is] a proper use of the Bible. Some people,
including my husband [Tony Campolo], say that those who believe
as I do about Romans one are stretching the passage to agree with
our own a priori beliefs. They say it is arrogant to declare that
19 hundred years of church history and tradition are in error.
I would remind these people that all those years of church tradition
supported an interpretation of Timothy 2:11 and 12 that disallowed
women from church leadership. We only know what the church fathers
said because those who might have been the church mothers had
no voice.
-Peggy Campolo
"We do exhort you, that you receive not
the grace of God in vain."
--2 CORINTHIANS 6: 1.
ST. AELRED describes the state of his soul before he resolved
to leave the world, its pomps and vanities. In the Life of the
Saint by Godescard, the saint says:
Those who looked only at the external grandeur which surrounded
me -- those who judged of my position in the world -- knew not
what was passing within me, and yet they cried out, Oh, how envious
is the lot of that man! how happy he must be !
But they did not see my dejection of mind; they did not know
of the insupportable anguish of a heart weighed down by sin.
It was then, O my God, that I knew of the unutterable joy I felt
when I found myself supported by Thy grace, and that I tasted
of that peace which is now my inseparable companion. -MASSILLON,
Meditations with the Saints
It is only when we take God into our lives that we are able to enjoy life to it's fullest extent. For when we do that, we look at the world in a new light. Everything is transformed because it becomes to us part of God's world. -Expositor's Dictionary of Texts, Volume 1 p.514
After love, friendship is God's most precious gift to [humans]. Those who have it are blessed indeed! -Michel Quoist The Breath of Love, p.111
I, Yahweh, have called you in saving justice, I have grasped you by the hand and shaped you; I have made you a covenant of the people and light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who live in darkness from the dungeon. I am Yahweh, that is my name! I shall not yield my glory to another... Is. 42:6-8 (NJB) To be adressed by [God] in the first person and to know [God's] name is at once to believe that the impossible is possible and [God's] will to be fufilled. - Douglas R. Jones, Peake's Commentary on the Bible p.519
[W]e cannot go on regarding the Bible as some precious old relic. That library of books is either an antique or, as the coranation service calls it, "the most precious thing this world affords; the lively oracles of God." -Herbert O'Driscoll, A Time for Good News Year B, p.73
Many [people] boast that they rely only on themselves.... Self-reliance is very good up to a cerrtain point. It is alright if it does not make us forget God, from Whom all good things come, and in Whom we live and move and have our being. -Expositor's Dictionary of Texts, Volume 1 p.514
Lord, we need, yes, we urgently need
to see in the midst of us men and women
who seem to serve no purpose at all except to love.
Lord, we need to discover and believe
that love is everything
the life-force, breath, blood and life itself
of this great humanity that we are.....
They may also be able to prove in their lives
that the language of love is not just a language of bodies.
Bodies that after al cease to speak one day,
while hearts continue to sing.
And they also prove
that life can be given in ways
that are not those of the flesh
and that the whole of life can be fruitful
if it is fufilled and inspired with love.
Happy are those who can see
those men and women whose hearts
are open to the joy and suffering of this world,
those communities of brothers and sisters
who watch and wait, let themselvs be loved
and thank and praise the one they contemplate,
the one in whose invisible presence the live,
the one who is God and who is called Love.
Happy are those who are able to understand
that, if God is really God,
it is right that some should live
recollected in body, heart and mind
for [God], their lives freely offered to [God],
because [God] is there, and freely offered for us.
-Michel Quoist The Breath of Love, p.194f
[T]here are seven categories of basic human goods which perfect persons and contribute to their fulfillment both as individuals and in communities. Four of these can be called "reflexive," since they are both reasons for choosing and are in part defined in terms of choosing. These are: (1) self-integration, which is harmony among all the parts of a person which can be engaged in freely chosen action; (2) practical reasonableness or authenticity, which is harmony among moral reflection, free choices, and their execution; (3) justice and friendship, which are aspects of the interpersonal communion of good persons freely choosing to act in harmony with one another; and (4) religion or holiness, which is harmony with God, found in the agreement of human individual and communal free choices with God's will. The reflexive goods also can be called "existential" or "moral," since they fulfill human subjects and interpersonal groups in the existential dimension of their being. The other three categories of basic human goods fulfill persons in the other three dimensions of their being. These goods can be called "nonreflexive" or "substantive," since they are not defined in terms of choosing, and they provide reasons for choosing which can stand by themselves. These are: (1) life itself, including health, physical integrity, safety, and the handing on of life to new persons; (2) knowledge of various forms of truth and appreciation of various forms of beauty or excellence; and (3) activities of skillful work and of play, which in their very performance enrich those who do them. -Christian Moral Principles, from Ch 5
The servant of God, who in [God's] sweet love enjoys an inward peace and comfort which the whole world cannot rob [one] of, carries [God's] paradise within [one's] own breast, whatever storms hover about [one]. --Bulter's Lives of the Saints
The Optimist and the Pessimist
Friends, one an optimist and the other a pessimist could never
quite agree on any topic of discussion. One day the optimist decided
he had found a good way to pull his pessimistic friend out of
his way of continual pessimistic way of thinking. The optimist
owned a huntin' dog that could walk on water. His plan? Take the
pessimist and the dog out duck hunting in a boat. They got out
into the middle of the lake, and the optimist shot down a duck.
The dog immediately walked out across the water, retrieved the
duck, and walked back to the boat. The optimist looked at his
pessimistic friend and said, "What do you think about that?"
The pessimist replied, "That dog can't swim, can he? --UNKNOWN
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