Above all we must not wish to cling to our suffering. Suffering surely deepens us and enhances our person, but we must not desire to become a deeper self than God wills. To suffer no longer can be a beautiful, perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.

A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.

Everything in Irenaeus is bathed in a warm and radiant joy, a wise and majestic gentleness. His words of struggle are hard as iron and crystal clear, ... so penetrating that they cannot fail to enlighten the unbiased observer.

The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity.

The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.

Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.

What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other.