Advent Quotes

Here are the some of the quotes I shared tonight from the book, "Bridges to Contemplative Living: Advent and Christmas"

"We cannot serve two masters. We cannot listen equally well to the Good News of the Incarnation and to the clatter of a secular season of pious sentiments and credit cards. We cannot equate a financial quarter of accelerated commercial activity with the Church's Advent call for repentance. Advent disposes us to conversion and single-mindedness. We are called to attend to our deepest needs and hopes: to realize the mitigation of human suffering through daily deeds of compassion for and service to our neighbors." - Jonathan Montaldo

"If Christ is the revelation of the whole meaning of humanity, if the meaning of human life is solely and entirely to be found in the fact that I am a child of God, then everything in my life becomes relevant or irrelevant in proportion as it tends to my growth as a member of Christ, as a child of God, and to the extension of Christ in the world of humankind through his Church." - Thomas Merton

"I am at that time of day when I am free, free to find and love myself...and God. All the things that have been pulling at me for years, demanding my full attention, such as the endless responsibility of trying to right the injustice of chronic poverty, have suddenly vanished like a poorly constructed building in Haiti toppled by an earthquake. I am at a kairos time of day, a time when I can give myself a chance to let go of everything I know in order to be carried along by the flow of all I do not know, the very flow of the mystery and true reality of life....Oddly enough, say all the saints and mystics, God is already there. It is I who am missing, hidden in the rubble of my own life, buried under the weight of my countless faults, failures, mistakes and illusions. Now is the time to cast off the burden of the past with all its missteps, concern for the future with all its sudden uncertainty and seek to see the face of God in this present moment, in this kairos time of day." - Gerard Thomas Straub