Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.

The question is not so much what the hand is doing (passing over some cash or a check) but what the heart is thinking while the hand is doing it.

We have the means of evangelizing our country, but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches.

Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.

The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men... but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God.

There is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.