Jenny Herrera

“This is where Lent starts, with the voice of God, singing the praise of Jesus, the Son. Just as this affirmation calls Jesus into the wilderness, so it calls us, too. We are starting out from a place of loving acceptance, not from one of rejection; we are starting out with the certainty that God knows who we are and loves us, so that are explorations are to find out why that should be. We are exploring a reality that is given to us, not achieved by our own effort. Yet, glorious as this sounds, it is also terrifying, because if it starts with God and not with us, then we are not in control of it. Jesus steps into the River Jordan with such apparent ease, laying aside all claims to define himself, and that is our journey, too. So easy and so hard.”
― Jane Williams, The Merciful Humility of God: The 2019 Lent Book

“What if we leaned on the rock instead of the sand? What if there was someone who gathered up all that is lost? What if there was a beloved who could never die, who loved you first, whose love called everything into existence and is therefore stronger than death? ... "Happy is the person who loves you," Augustine says, "and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you." Happiness is loving everyone and everything in God, the immortal one who holds all mortal creatures in his hand. When one loves in this way - in this "order," so to speak - then, "though left alone, he loses none dear to him; for all are dear in the one who cannot be lost.”
― James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

“How to die is a question of how to live, but how to live is a matter of knowing how to love: how to find a love that isn't haunted by fear, a love that is stronger than death - figuring out how to love rightly and live lightly with all the mortal beauties of creation without despising or resenting their mortality either...

The hope of eternal life does not efface the desire to live - it is the fulfillment of the desire to live, to live in a way that we can never lose what we love.”
― James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

“Zechariah asks for proof... Mary, on the other hand, points out the obstacles of the angel's plan - she is a virgin - but she asks nothing else... Mary simply says: 'Here I am, the servant of the Lord', ' yes, I will do this.'

Later generations of Christians went on to justify God's choice of Mary by investing her with a miraculous childhood and holy parents, making her worthy in ways that we can understand. But that seems to undermine the point that Luke helps us to see: Zechariah was 'worthy,' in all outward forms, but he muffed it. Mary is simply willing. The Magnificat is Mary's theology: what God sees in her is precisely her 'lowliness', which gives her insight into the character of God, whose mercy 'scatters the proud', 'brings down the powerful', so that the hungry can be filled. God's mercy makes space for those who are thought to be of no account, and Mary knows herself to be one of them.”
― Jane Williams, The Merciful Humility of God: The 2019 Lent Book