Will you think less of him . . . because to seek for what had wandered, the good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep came on the mountains and hills on which you used to sacrifice and found the wanderer?
God is the goodness that cannot be angry, for He is nothing but goodness.
Our soul is one-ed to Him, who is unchangeable goodness,
and between God and our soul is neither anger nor forgiveness, as He sees it.
In her own discomfort with an apparently oversimplified view of the place of sin, Julian faced the terrible paradox of God’s goodness, the horrific evidence of the world’s evil, and the knowledge of damnation. Uniquely, she is led to a way of living in that paradox.
Leadership never happens in a vacuum, but among specific individuals in a particular context, which means we need to relate to them. Building these relationships is like building capital we can draw on when we want to challenge people to move forward in some new ways. If we do not take the time to make these connections, any changes we institute will be short-lived and will certainly not last beyond our tenure.
[Jesus] he rightly calls the Scriptures “a door,” for they bring us to God and open to us the knowledge of God. They make us his sheep. They guard us and do not let the wolves come in after us. For Scripture, like some sure door, bars the passage against the heretics, placing us in a state of safety as to all that we desire and not allowing us to wander. And, if we do not undo Scripture, we shall not easily be conquered by our enemies.
Not long before the day on which she was to leave this life—you knew which day it was to be, O Lord, though we did not—my mother and I were alone, leaning from a window which overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house where we were staying at Ostia. We were talking alone together and our conversation was serene and joyful.
He whose goodness is his own nature and not some nonessential gift, says, “I am the good Shepherd.” He adds the character of this goodness, which we are to imitate, saying, “The good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
Let us keep the feast on the first day of the great week, as a symbol of the world to come, in which we here receive a pledge that we shall have everlasting life hereafter. Then, having passed hence, we shall keep a perfect feast with Christ, while we cry out and say, like the saints, ‘I will pass to the place of the wondrous tabernacle, to the house of God; with the voice of gladness and thanksgiving, the shouting of those who rejoice’ whence pain and sorrow and sighing have fled, and upon our heads gladness and joy shall have come to us!
The disciples were simple people. They were ordinary folks who worked for a living, paid bills, and had to fulfill all the mundane responsibilities of life. Some were married and had to take care of those relationships properly. A few certainly must have had children. They had all the ingredients for the recipe of ordinary, everyday people. Just like us.
As global citizens in the twenty-first century, we’re beginning to realize that none of us lives in a permanent and unchanging home, and that the way we treat our quarters—our oikos—has a big impact on all the other residents of this squatter’s camp.