He who does not have the church as his mother, does not have God as his father.

Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not

The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.

The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

He who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.

The Old (Testament) is in the New (Testament) revealed, the New is in the Old concealed.

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

Our Lord reserved to Himself certain things which He would do in due time in a manner outside the course and order of nature, so that they would wonder and be astonished at seeing not great but unusual things, who are unmoved by things daily seen. For the government of the world is a greater miracle than feeding five thousand men from five loaves; yet at the former no one wonders, the latter astonishes all men: not as a greater wonder, but as a rarer.

A Christian man is on his guard with respect to those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by Whom the world itself was made; for he is warned by the precept of the apostle and faithfully hears what has been said, 'Beware that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the elements of the world'

I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.

I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God's family.

What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?

We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail.

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square

We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.

Christ bears the wounds of the church, his body, just as he bore the wounds of crucifixion. I sometimes wonder which have hurt worse.

Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.

If your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap.

If your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap.

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

In the move The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with a thousand eunuch servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten. In Christian theology, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borned the cost.