We, Jesus' followers, are the agents assigned to carry out God's will on earth. Too easily we expect God to do something for us when instead God wants to do it through us.

Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.

The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us.

God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world.

I do not get to know God and then do His will. I get to know Him by doing His will.

We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

Unless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.