Tim Muldoon > Quotes

“[Jesus] looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” —Luke 6:20–23”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“This week, as you contemplate Jesus’ invitation to “come and see” who he is and what he’s about, pay attention both to what he does and does not do. Why does he show his power? What are the conditions that allow him to work miracles? What seems to be his objective? This is not a man who appears to be on a massive public-relations campaign, announcing the presence of God in a carefully strategized sequence. He seems much more interested in random acts of compassion that get him into trouble.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“The Lord says, “I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22).”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a profound awareness of the coexistence of pain and healing to be found in acknowledging injustice. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” he wrote, “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“But because we acknowledge that sometimes we do what we hate and develop habits that are destructive even when we may not be aware of it, we need to inform our consciences and pray for grace.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“We are tempted to believe sometimes that religion or spirituality is about ideas, abstractions, words, texts, principles, moral teachings, beliefs, doctrines, or philosophical systems. But here the Gospel tells a basic truth: our faith is about coming to know a person: faith involves being invited into intimacy with Jesus. We need ideas, belief systems, and the rest, but in the end we must simply allow Jesus to reveal himself to us, allow his heart to speak to our heart, so that we, too, might behold his glory.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. —Romans 7:15”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“But this paradox implies that God’s love is God’s justice: before one who loves us without any condition whatsoever, we stand naked with empty hands. There is nothing we can offer but ourselves.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Put most simply, Íñigo wanted to help people see through false desires to the true ones that most purely revealed God’s love for us. For him, spiritual exercises were not about earning God’s love; they were about removing the detours that distract us from knowing it intimately.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” —Matthew 17:1–7”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“In the story of the Transfiguration, we see Jesus with his closest friends, his inner circle—the men whom he relied on most. This is not the public Jesus: the charismatic rabbi, the healer, the wonder worker. Jesus’ public face is real, but Jesus the intimate friend is more than the sum of his public words and actions. What Peter, James, and John see is Jesus up close, real, and personal, and they are awestruck. Peter would write of this event later: He received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. (2 Peter 1:17–18)”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“In the temple [Jesus] found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” —John 2:14–16”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“The Beatitudes are an insider’s guide to the Christian life, inasmuch as they describe what it’s like to be on mission in the world. Every customary marker of success, Jesus suggests, is wrong—and what appears to be difficult may in fact be a sign of fidelity to building God’s kingdom.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“When [Jesus] got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” —Matthew 8:23–27”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“What Jesus shows in his experience of trial is readiness to do what he knows the Father has asked of him, even to go to a painful death. This is Jesus’ own paradigmatic act of faith: to trust the Father up to his death, even when the Father seems absent.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“I love the image of the Holy Spirit enfolding the world in her wings, caring for it the way that a mother holds her baby close.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout: Daily Exercises for a Healthy Faith

“What Paul acknowledges in his letter to the Romans, in which we find this small but poignant observation, is that everyone tends to fall into habits that in many cases bring about results that we hate. More important, we may not recognize that those things are bad until someone draws the connection. But once they do, we face a dilemma. Do we accept the consequences of our actions and change our ways (the biblical word is “repent”)? Or do we tend to criticize the messenger and accuse him or her of being politically backward?”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“The first group of ten exercises focuses on the theme of seeing myself as God sees me.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” —John 13:3–8”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Jesus is calling us to freedom from the hang-ups that prevent us from giving ourselves fully to love. “The kingdom of heaven is right here!” he says in so many words—right in the people around you now—and the only inhibitions to embracing it fully are our fears.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“We practice discernment of God’s commands by remaining close to Christ and Christ’s Body, the church. In doing so, we place ourselves with the poor, the suffering, the forgotten, the abused, and the hated: God’s beloved creatures whom others have forgotten. We choose to see humanity where others see problems: the child starving on the streets or growing in her destitute mother’s womb; the young prostitute whose daily bread comes from the grasping hands of sex tourists; the foster child shuttled from home to home; the elderly person in need of health care. Seeing Jesus in those people, we ask three simple questions: what have I done for Jesus? What am I doing for Jesus? What will I do for Jesus?”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Imagine, if you can, what our use of money might look like if there were no sin. We would use it for the sake of trade and to encourage creative work that served the common good. We would not see harmful risk-taking of the sort that we find in, say, casinos or stock markets. We would not see employers making many times the amount they pay workers. We would not see the fleecing of customers, the powerful preying on the vulnerable, and rapacious lending.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Here, and in the other Gospels, we see Jesus saying something to the effect of “try a new way of looking at things by placing your trust in the Good News I’m sharing with you.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“[Jesus said] “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” —Matthew 7:7–11”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” —Matthew 21:6–9”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“The great paradox of the Christian mystery is that God has not put an end to violence and injustice; God instead has elected to suffer with us. How often we wish that God had chosen another way, the way of power over human choosing!”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“How is God using my desires to serve my family and the rest of the world?”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“God’s demand for holiness is ultimately a demand that we let go of what prevents us from taking comfort in the presence of God.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“spiritual workouts are about removing obstacles to God’s grace so that God can draw us closer to himself and make us capable of serving him. Those obstacles are always rooted in false desire, by which I mean cravings for things that, in the long run, do us or humanity no good. A second thing to remember is that authentic spirituality always has an “ecclesial” dimension—that is, it is always ordered not toward my isolated personal good, but rather toward the good of the whole people of God.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action

“Forty days represents a period of conversion, of serious preparation for a new way of living.”
― Tim Muldoon, The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflection, and Action