More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 3 - September 29, 2019
Prophets then and prophets now are those who look at life as it is—hard of heart for many, unfair for most—and set out to expand it. Prophets simply refuse to accept a vision of tomorrow that is limited to the boundaries of yesterday and empty of God’s word for today.
the same three options that challenge us yet.
forgo the struggle entirely,
surrender to the prevaili...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
refuse to agree with the injustice...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Prophecy, in other words, is an essential dimension of Christian presence, a clear witness of the Spirit-directed life.
The call to discern the difference between what is holy and what is simply popular, between what is and what should be, is of the essence of the good life.
Dom Hélder Câmara,
“If I give alms to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
Óscar Romero
“You may kill me,” he said, “but I will rise in the hearts of the poor.”
Prophets can be so irritating.
Dostoyevsky
“People reject their prophets and slay them but they lo...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Which is better, people ask, to be prophetic or to be pastoral? Is it more important to do charity or to demand justice?
To pit one work against another only dims the real value of each.
Dorothy Day’s
prophetic: she did both.
Where the hallmark of charity is its uncommon generosity, the ring of real prophecy lies in its uncommon courage.
If there is anything about the prophetic dimension of life that is clear, it is surely this: more people decline to accept the appointment than to embrace it.
The struggle to escape the world—to avoid conflict and let things take care of themselves—stays strong in us.
We have lost the holy gift of awareness
the time most germane to our own sanctification is now.
No exception is made for anyone. None of us, however isolated from the rest of life, is forgiven the responsibility.
To be spiritually mature, we must each be about something greater than ourselves.
Mary Oliver
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Maimonides,
twelfth-century Jewish philosopher and astronomer,
Human reason,
only take us so far. Then, at that point, “holy irrationality” must, if we are ever to become fully human, take us beyond it.
The prophets
know that peace is essential,
The prophet believes that justice i...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
So, to the rank and file of humanity, prophets look mad. They look wild.
They are the saints of Holy Madness, these ones, who like the biblical prophets, like Jesus, see beyond the boundaries of the reasonable to the edges of the imperative.
the starving must be fed or the humanity of the rest of us will waste away before our very eyes.
He stood up and in a clear voice declared wrong any policies of either sacred or secular—church or state—that burdened the backs of the powerless and crushed the spirits of the poor.
being unreasonable is the only reasonable way to the Gospel.
Jesus raised both the living-dead and the dead-dead to life.
Prophets,
want to make sure that there’s no misunderstanding about what disturbs them.
The temptation is to be “reasonable.”
The pressure to be quiet,
is very effective.
We stay nice.
We challenge nothing and everything goes unchallenged.
Prophecy is nothing more than Christianity at its best.
We are called to live the Word ourselves,
God did not finish creation.
