The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.

When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you. Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand... but just how far and in what form? At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding, of all theology and ecclesial wisdom.

Hell is to be contemplated strictly as a matter which concerns me alone. As part of the spiritual life it belongs behind the 'closed door' of my own room. From the standpoint of living faith, I cannot fundamentally believe in anyone's damnation but my own; as far as my neighbor is concerned, the light of resurrection can never be so obscured that I would be allowed or obliged to stop hoping for him.

Only the Christian religion, which in its essence is communicated by the eternal child of God, keeps alive in its believers the lifelong awareness of their being children, and therefore of having to ask and give thanks for things.

Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, the Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.

God defines himself as "I am who I am", which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.

One can understand nothing of Christ without the mystery of the Trinity, nothing of the Church without faith in the divinity and humanity of Christ, nothing of the sacraments without the bridal mystery between Christian life without Christian faith. Thus, the present sermons revolve around the same center--the inexhaustible mystery of the one indivisible faith.