With the early Christians you couldn't have God as your father unless you have the church as your mother. This isn't accepting the church as a perfect thing.

The problem is that the Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul stuff may feel good, but none of that typical stuff helps when somebody in your neighborhood is murdered.

MOST of the ugliness in the human narrative comes from a distorted quest to possess beauty. COVETING begins with appreciating blessings: MURDER begins with a hunger for justice. LUST begins with a recognition of beauty. GLUTTONY begins when our enjoyment of the delectable gifts of GOD starts to consume us. IDOLATRY begins when our seeing a reflection of God in something beautiful leads to our thinking that the beautiful image bearer is worthy of WORSHIP.

Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the poor rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said.

The Eucharist is a symbol of that as you have bread, the staple food of the poor, and wine, a luxury of the rich, which are brought together at the table.

[People] need to find words that can reconnect them with each other. That is the gift of good liturgy, yeah. We're not talking about fluffy stuff. We're talking about real life for people around the world. Our prayers should be said like the daily breath that gives us life.

Charity is merely returning what we have stolen.