Vanessa Johnson’s Reviews > Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1 > Status Update

I'm always amazed at the depths Leiva-Merikakis can plumb in a single verse!

On Matthew 9:26: "The glory of the deed and the voice of the Bride go out and fill the earth as resounding epithalamion, because all of creation is by rights the nuptial chamber of the Word and longs to vibrate with his wedding song."

"He transforms a place of death into a bridal chamber. His everlasting gesture as Word is to lead his creaturely bride by the hand, graciously and mightily, out of inescapable death into a joy of indestructible life in a communion of love. In this dark solitude, suddenly transfigured by the presence of Jesus and his act of bright love, the girl has nothing to do but awaken to contemplate the beauty of Jesus' face"

"The deepest meaning of Christian discipleship is not to work for Jesus but to be with Jesus....The work of the apostle then becomes nothing other than the overflowing of the joy, wisdom, and nourishment he has himself partaken of during the intimate banquet at his Lord's table."

"The heart of Christian living is the contemplation of the unfathomable Person of Christ, a contemplation that spontaneously bursts into the hymn of glory that flows from us as we behold how near God has come, and how unendingly."

"The divine act of intervention in the most intimate regions of our being both communicates the radiance of his Face and drowns the unclean, swinelike ferociousness that makes us refuse the approach of his healing love."

"If I had the mind of God, I would forgive all which means I would sustain rather than judge, or, better still, my very judgement would consist of forgiveness, because it would judge the misery and plight that underlies most human actions."

"To abandon myself to his love would constitute the supreme act of my freedom for it would be nothing less than soaring in the heaven of his providence, a life of permanent flight in celebration of the sheer beauty of space. The bird, which in its airborne existence is the universal symbol of freedom from constraint and care, is here made by Jesus to be the privileged symbol of divine filiation and trust."