To Think God as Love

That Jesus was incarnated as a male tells us that God intends our relationship to him to be nuptial. Here I’m following Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who argues that Christ’s maleness, his virginity and celibacy, work analogously, instructing us that we are Christ’s bride, claimed by him, devoted to him, intended for him, and that in [...]

We do not build the kingdom of God on earth by our own efforts (however assisted by grace); the most we can do, through genuine prayer, is to make as much room as possible, in ourselves and in the world, for the kingdom of God, so that its energies can go to work.

‘It is as though God abandons the sinner to the devouring self-contradiction of his opposition to God’s word; it sticks in him like a ”thorn in the flesh”. The more he kicks against it, the more he drives the pain into his own flesh (Acts 26:14). The sinner bears judgment in himself; ultimately he will condemn [...]

O Lord, in thee have I trusted: let me never be put to shame. And if an angel from heaven were to assure me that I had been cast out from thy sight, I would not believe him. Even if thou thyself, O God Most High, wert to say that thou hadst damned me for all [...]

The resurrection is by definition the overcoming of death by one who was dead - really, completely dead. That means the news of Sunday is really good only if Friday’s and Saturday’s news are unimaginably bad. If tomorrow we celebrate the emptiness of the tomb, then today we observe, solemnly, its fullness. 1  Today, let us face the fact that [...]

ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς ἐν αὐτῷ Elected are we in him…  Predestination… Election…  Tragically, many of us find these words troubling, repulsive, terrifying. In point of fact, however, these words name the most beautiful, most delectable truth – the truth of love as finally, gloriously triumphant over all that is against God’s will for us. We simply [...]

Not only is the eros between human beings the basis that permits God to impress his own agape on the human person; the encounter face to face between man and woman is also the basis that permits the possibility of such a face to face encounter between God and humanity. In the Church, humanity is [...]

We are held so tightly in the grip of a reality so real we (usually) have no sense of being grasped at all. Admittedly, it feels – at times at least – as if we’ve been left hanging, as if we’re suspended on and by nothing. But our feelings are not to be trusted.  For [...]

“[Jesus] as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience to the Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness of the world.

“Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for him, the less he has merited it.