The surest sign that God is alive in you is joy.

Christ's invitation to the priesthood is an invitation to a way of life that is athletic in its intensity and heroic in its form.

We are exceptionally good at seeing the faults in others and exceptionally adept at ignoring the faults in ourselves.

I don't think we'll understand Advent correctly until we see it as a preparation for a revolution.

The Bible constantly warns against a merely mercenary relationship with God - a friendship of convenience or self-interest. We should not love God simply because doing so will produce many consolations in our life. We must enter a true relationship, were we fall in love not with His benefits, but with Him.

If the Word truly became flesh, then God had not only a mother, but also a grandmother, cousins, great-aunts, and weird uncles. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional, a mix of the good and bad, the saintly and the sinful, the glorious and the not so glorious. And this is such good news for us.

There's no way up but down.