Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.
We could cope – the world could cope – with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one.
If Luke and John were simply constructing narratives to combat Doceticism, they surely shot themselves in the foot with both barrels when they spoke of Jesus appearing through locked doors, disappearing again, sometimes being recognized, sometimes not, and finally ascending into heaven.
Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce.
Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence.
Author says writing about Jesus is difficult because it is like writing about a friend “who is still liable to surprise us.
The New Testament says the Word became flesh. Sacramental theology is all about discovering, in fear and trembling, how to allow that Word to go on becoming flesh.