All we know is that his name was Matthias and that for some reason he was chosen to replace the traitor Judas in the circle of Jesus’ apostles. . . . I have a feeling that Matthias turns up many times in our lives. He is the person who just failed to get into the photograph;
That Jesus’ revelation and the woman’s realization of him come through dialogue is an important feature to notice about the Gospel of John. Jesus does no sign here. There is no “miracle.” Rather he makes a claim and offers living water to this stranger.
Ignatius, who is also called God-bearer, to Polycarp, bishop of the church of the Smyrnaeans—rather, the one who has God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ as his bishop. Warmest greetings.
A door opens in the centre of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.
One of the pieces of our Lenten journey is cultivating the art of discernment, listening for the voice of God in the wilderness of our hearts, trying to sense the divine will. Discernment is part of our ongoing conversion,
What are we assuming when we ask to know God’s will? Are we imagining a God who, like a master planner, has a five-year, ten-year, or lifetime plan mapped out for us and leaves it up to us to figure out what it is?
When Jesus came to Jordan’s stream his Father’s will obeying,
and was baptized by John, there came a voice from heaven saying,
“This is my dear beloved Son upon whom rests my favor,”
And till God’s will is fully done he will not bend or waver,
for he is Christ the Savior.
One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ, as Christ says, John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”. . .
How was it possible, I thought, that a change could be great enough to strip away in a single moment the innate hardness of our nature? How could the habits acquired over the course of many years disappear, since these are so deeply rooted within us?
Openness is not gentility in the social arena. It is not polite listening to people with whom we inherently disagree. It is not political or civil or “nice.” It is not even simple hospitality. It is the munificent abandonment of the mind to new ideas, to new possibilities.