Despair can be like an iron band constricting the heart.

Passion is loving something enough to suffer for it.

Even the disciples of Jesus all fled from their master's cross. Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way.

There were two different expectations in this land of the future. On the one hand the the optimistic belief in an unending progress with millenarianistic overtones and on the other hand the doomsday expectation of the final battle of Armageddon. Both are perspectives are uniquely American and both are inter-related.

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.

In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the vertical dimension of faith and the horizontal dimension of love for ones neighbor and political change.

The present time of believers is no longer determined by the past. It takes its definition from the future.