Status Updates From من اجل حياة العالم

"Secularism, I submit, is above all a negation of worship. I stress: not of God's existence, not of some kind of transcendence and therefore of some kind of religion. If secularism in theological terms is a heresy, it is primarily a heresy about man. It is the negation of man as a worshiping being, as homo adorans: the one for whom worship is the essential act which both "posits" his humanity and fulfills it."

It sounds like a paradox, but the basic religion that is being preached and accepted as the only means of overcoming secularism is in reality a surrender to secularism. This surrender can take place - and actually does - in all Christian confessions, although it is differently "colored" in a nondenominational suburban "community church" than in a traditional, hierarchical, confessional and liturgical parish.

"In this world suffering and disease are indeed "normal," but their very "normalcy" is abnormal. They reveal the ultimate and permanent defeat of man and of life, a defeat which no partial victories of medicine, however wonderful and truly miraculous, can ultimately overcome. But in Christ suffering is not "removed"; it is transformed into victory. The defeat itself becomes victory, an entrance into the Kingdom."

On matrimony and priesthood.

"Baptism proper begins with the blessing of the water. To understand, however, the meaning of water here, one must stop thinking of it as an isolated "matter" of the sacrament. Or rather, one must realize that water is the "matter" of sacrament, because it stands for the whole of matter, which is, in baptism, the sign and presence of the world itself."

"The real tragedy of Christianity is not its "compromise" with the world and progressive "materialism," but on the contrary, its "spiritualization" and transformation into "religion." And religion - as we know already - has thus come to mean a world of pure spirituality, a concentration of attention on matters pertaining to the "soul.""

Nowhere is this more acute than the way we have come to perceive "time."

When Christians gather together on the Lord's Day, "The purpose is to fulfill the Church, and that means to make present the One in whom all things are at their end, and all things are at their beginning." We, as the corporate Body of Christ on Earth, make present Christ on Earth by the very act of our intentionally gathering together.

One chapter in, and I can already tell that this is a book I'm going to really enjoy, even as I disagree with some aspects of it. There are times my highlights encompass multiple pages in a row.

Jesus died "for the life of the world," but what is this "life"?

“We come into the presence of Christ to offer him our time, we extend our arms to receive him. And he fills this time with himself, he heals it and makes it—again and again—the time of salvation.”