Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word Quotes

“The Virgin Mary is called the [Greek words] (the "book of the Word of life") by the Greek Church. The book of the Gospel, the book of Christ's origins and life, can be written and proclaimed because God has first written his living Word in the living book of the Virgin's being, which she has offered to her Lord in all its purity and humility—the whiteness of a chaste, empty page. If the name of Mary does not often appear in the pages of the Gospel as evident participant in the action, it is because she is the human ground of humility and obedience upon which every letter of Christ's life is written. She is the Theotokos, too, in the sense that she is the book that bears, and is inscribed with, the Word of God. She keeps her silence that he might resonate the more plainly within her.”
― Erasmo Leiva Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“At a certain point a totally new garment has to be produced, not only because something more beautiful is required, but also out of regard for the integrity of the aged and venerable tunic.”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“His death on the Cross will “cover” all sin, because his divine blood will be shed to the last drop, drenching the world with mercy The”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“9:36a    ἰδὼν δὲ τούς ὄχλους ἐσπλαγχνίσθη πεϱὶ αὐτῶν seeing the crowds, his insides were moved with pity for them THE JEWS AND THE GREEKS could not succeed in making pity and compassion into a purely mental act. It sounds archaic, hardly short of embarrassing, to say that “Jesus saw the crowds and felt pity for them in his bowels.” But, in fact, any translation that omits compassion’s element of viscerality (for σπλάγχνα, the root of the verb here, means “viscera”, “bowels”, “womb”) has already betrayed the depth of Jesus’ divine and human pity. We all know how the strongest emotions—whether sorrow, fear, joy, or desire—are all initially registered in the abdominal region, and this physiological reaction is one of the proofs of the authenticity of our emotions. The same teacher, herald, and healer who surpassed all others in these crafts finally reveals himself in utter silence and inactivity in his deepest nature: the Compassionate One who is affected by suffering more elementally than the sufferers he sees around him. If Mary’s womb was proclaimed blessed for having borne such a Child, we now see in the Son the Mother’s most precious quality: wide-wombed compassion. When we allow ourselves to be moved in this way, we are already hopelessly involved with the object of our pity: no possibility here of a distanced display of “charity” that refuses to become tainted by contact with the stench of human misery. Jesus looks at the crowds, then, and is viscerally moved. What power in the gaze of a Savior who pauses in the midst of his activity in order to take into himself the full, wounded reality about him! Jesus never protects himself against the claims of distress. He is not content with emanating the truth, joy, and healing power that are his: he must become a fellow sufferer. His loving gaze is like an open wound that filters out no sorrow. He has already done so much for them; but as long as he sees misery, nothing is enough; and so he wonders what else remains to be done. His contemplative sorrow becomes a stimulant to his creative imagination. He nestles all manner of plight within his person, and every human need becomes a churning in his inward parts. He interiorizes the chaos of the surrounding landscape, but, by entering him, it becomes contained, comprehended, embraced and saved.”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“Such gratuity necessarily revolutionizes the ordinary human way of looking at talent, effort, and achievement. Henceforth I do strain, I do intend, and I do utilize my potential, but solely by virtue of Another. What can my effort to cultivate the land avail me if I have neither seed nor soil? The ground, the possibility, the impulse, the sense—all of these are given to me absolutely free and undeserved. Jesus does not specify what the “free gift” precisely is which the apostles have received, and the word δωϱεὰν may also be read adverbially to mean “gratis”, “free of charge”, so that the alternate translation would be: “You received without cost; give without charge.” The very indetermination of the object, however, here makes the formulation even more absolute. Although in context the specific “gift” meant is probably the divine authority to heal and generally to act in Jesus’ stead, surely it also refers to the first call to discipleship by Jesus, to the invitation to and privilege of following him and sharing his life, and to this present call to special apostleship as well. In other words, the “gift” given by God free of charge is the Christian’s whole life; Christ Jesus himself. The gratuitousness with which God gives his Son to mankind, furthermore, imposes an inviolable pattern of transitiveness. The one who receives must give the gift further as freely as he has received it. As a result of receiving from God, one must give like God. God, then, imparts not only the gift itself but the very manner of the giving. This gift communicates its qualities to its recipient: having such a gift, I myself must become gift. The gift of God’s life—Jesus—does not pass through me like water through a pipe, leaving me unaffected. It descends upon me like fire on a sacrifice, roasting the meat and making it edible for God’s hungry.”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“the”
― Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“God desires the sinner to turn away from the darkness of his own nothingness and void and come to himself, to draw life from his life. Sin is grounded in an illusion concerning my own alleged greatness and worth in my own eyes. Repentance is grounded, not in a desire to abase myself, but in a clear understanding and a profound conviction of my great worth in the eyes of God.”
― Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“If one searches for Christ—the Truth, the Light, the Beauty—in the world or in heaven “in order to destroy him”, not to adore him and love him, but to manipulate and conform him to our desires, it would have been better to have remained at the level of an idiocy that does not search at all.”
― Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“When Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you”, he is in fact saying, ‘Come and become my spouse.’ This”
― Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“COMING TO JESUS is the condition for finding relief. All we need to do is choose to enter the sphere of his presence, and the unnatural pressures borne down upon us by both the world and ourselves begin to dissipate. To”
― Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“In the image of Christ, man becomes fully the child of God when he allows God to fill his mouth with praise. Earthly”
― Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“God gives powerful encouragement to us who have claimed his protection by grasping (ϰϱατῆσαι, cf. v. 25) the hope set before us. That”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“In the beginning (ἄϱχή) was the Word” (Jn 1:1) is not primarily a temporal statement. The”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“Mercy I desire and not sacrifice”, he tells them, quoting the prophet Hosea (6:6), thus giving them their subject for meditation. The”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“Jesus is always passing because God is never inactive, because God is life itself, principle of all life and movement. Jesus”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1

“Mary blesses God for the destiny that is hers: to cling to the design that the Father decreed for the Son, not only passively, but as one who nurtures, fosters, opens roads, makes things possible. Mary’s sorrow was an active coöperation with the will of-God for Christ Jesus. How could it have been otherwise, since the Savior was the common Son—one and undivided—of the all-wise Father and the all-obedient Mother?”
― Erasmo Leiva, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1