No wall is strong enough!

By dying as he did, Christ shows that he loves us in such a way that he can descend into our private hells. His love is so empathetic and compassionate that it can penetrate all barriers that we construct out of hurt and fear and enter right into our despair and hopelessness.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 147

We need a theology that…

We need a theology that teaches us that God does not just give us one chance, but that every time we close a door he opens another one for us.

We need a theology that challenges us not to make mistakes, that takes sin seriously, but which tells us that when we sin, when we make mistakes, we are given the chance to take our place among the broken, among those whose lives are not perfect, the loved sinners, those for whom Christ came.

We need a theology which tells us that a second, third, fourth and fifth chance are just as valid as the first one.

We need a theology that tells us that mistakes are not forever, that they are not even for a lifetime, that time and grace wash clean, that nothing is irrevocable.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 145

But I've screwed it up too many times and too badly…

We have too much fear, in the end, of God. Ultimately we look at the scrambled egg, at our own mistakes and sins, and believe that the loss of a certain grace is irrevocable, that a mistake hangs us. Basically we do not believe that there is a second chance, let alone seventy-times-seven chances, that can be just as lifegiving as the first.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 144

Distraction is not a virtue!

Theologian Jan Walgrave commented that our present age constitutes a virtual conspiracy against the interior life. That is a gentle way of saying that, within our culture, distraction is normal, prayer and solitude are not. There is little that is contemplative within our culture and within our lives.

Why is this? We are not, by choice or ideology, a culture set against solitude, interiority and prayer. Nor are we, in my opinion, more malicious, pagan or afraid of interiority than past ages. Where we differ from the past is not so much in badness as in busyness, in hurriedness. We do not think contemplatively because we never quite get around to it.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 125