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

"....the centurion utters the second half of his prayer, which has been immortalized by the Roman liturgy as the exclamation before receiving Holy Communion. Such liturgical use, in fact, is the Church's way of molding every generation of Christians according to the mind of the centurion. Few other characters in Scripture have received such an honor."

"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."

"We learn of God's liberality with us when, after we have proven that we seek to serve only him, he then overwhelms us with the very things we thought we had renounced forever, only raised to an infinitely higher potency of truth, perdurance, and delight."