“…if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: ‘You are the body of Christ, member for member.’ If you, therefore, are Christ’s body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying ‘Amen’ to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith.”
Augustine, Sermon 272
“The purpose of the dogmas of the Church is not to shut down further discussion. Quite the opposite: they evolved in opposition to heresies which did just that, wrapping up the truths of our faith in narrow theological positions which betrayed the mystery. …dogmas can be treated as idols, which halt our search for God, but properly understood they are icons which invite us to carry on our pilgrimage towards the mystery, pushing us beyond too easy answers.” Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church? p.67
“If we go to confession, it is not to plead for forgiveness from God. It is to thank him for it… When God forgives our sins, he is not changing his mind about us. He is changing our minds about him. He does not change, his mind is never anything but loving: he is love.” Herbert McCabe, God, Christ and Us, p.16.
“…worship is the gift of grace. The Father has given to us the Son and the Spirit to draw us into a life of shared communion – of participating through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father – that we might be drawn in love into the very trinitarian life of God himself.”
James Torrance, Worship, Community and the triune God of Grace, p. 25
We are not our own judges. We can neither justify our sin nor guarantee the righteousness of our good works. We stand before God only because, in the bad and the good, God stands for us, not simply wanting that we be good, but making it that we are. This is the gospel, the free humanity of Jesus given to be our very own, no judgement to fear.
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“Prayer is not a narrowly private activity; it is about your belonging in the body of Christ, and in the family of humanity. If you understand what is going on when you pray, then the world changes. And if in prayer you are gradually becoming attuned to the will and purpose of God, then the divine power that comes into you is bound to finds its outlet in this healing of relations. That is not to say that you pray in order to be a nicer person, or so that justice and reconciliation will happen. You pray because Christ is in you. And if that is really happening, then the sort of things you can expect to see developing around you are justice and reconciliation.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.73
“…the essence of prayer as the New Testament presents it is to let Jesus pray in you and take you into the very heart of God the Father. Just as Jesus empties himself out of love for us, we, in return, empty ourselves. We push away the selfish desires and the limiting images that crowd into our heads. We make room, we empty our minds and hearts, so that the love of God can fill them. So our prayer is that we may be made one with the will and the action of Jesus. And that means, says Origen, that when we pray and join in his activity we are doing a priestly thing, bringing the pains and needs of earth into the heart of God.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.67
“… in a nutshell, [prayer is] letting Jesus pray in you, and beginning that lengthy and often very tough process by which our selfish thoughts and ideals and hopes are gradually aligned with his eternal action; just as, in his own earthly life, his human fears and hopes and desires and emotions are put into the context of his love for the Father, woven into his eternal relation with the Father – even in that moment of supreme pain and mental agony that he endures the night before his death.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.63
“In the Eucharist we are at the centre of the world: we are where Christ, the Son, gives his life to his Father in the Spirit. And in the Eucharist we are at the end of the world: we are seeing how the world’s calling is fulfilled in advance; we are seeing ourselves and our world as they really are, contemplating them in the depths of God, finding their meaning in relation to God. And the job of a Christian is constantly trying to dig down to that level of reality, and to allow gratitude, repentance and transformation to well up from that point. ‘With you is the fountain of life’, says the psalm; and it is that fountain that we drink from in Holy Communion.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.59
“… self-awareness and repentance [are] completely bound up with the nature of what we are doing in the Holy Eucharist: the celebration and the sorrow, the Easter and the cross are always there together. And as we come together as Christians, we come not to celebrate ourselves and how well we are doing, but to celebrate the eternal Gift that is always there, and to give the thanks that are drawn out of us by that Gift.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.54