Jesus of Nazareth Quotes

“Man is a relational being. And if his first, fundamental relationship is disturbed—his relationship with God—then nothing else can be truly in order.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“The sign of the new Covenant is humility, hiddenness—the sign of the mustard-seed. The Son of God comes in lowliness. Both these elements belong together: the profound continuity in the history of God’s action and the radical newness of the hidden mustard-seed.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Admittedly, Jesus’ words to Pilate also remain perennially true: “My kingship is not of this world” (Jn 18:36). In the course of history, the mighty of this world have sometimes tried to align it with their own, and that is when it is put at risk: they seek to link their power with Jesus’ power, and in the process they disfigure his kingdom and endanger it.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“So one aspect of becoming a Christian is having to leave behind what everyone else thinks and wants, the prevailing standards, in order to enter the light of the truth of our being, and aided by that light to find the right path. Mary”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Jesus takes upon himself the whole of humanity, the whole history of man, and he gives it a decisive re-orientation toward a new manner of human existence.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Jesus’ freedom is not the freedom of the liberal. It is the freedom of the Son, and thus the freedom of the truly devout person. As Son, Jesus brings a new freedom: not the freedom of someone with no obligations, but the freedom of someone totally united with the Father’s will, someone who helps mankind to attain the freedom of inner oneness with God.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Just as the genealogies break off at the end, because Jesus was not begotten by St. Joseph, but was truly born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, so it now can be said of us that our true "genealogy" is faith in Jesus, who gives us a new origin, who brings us to birth "from God.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“With the flight into Egypt and the return to the promised land, Jesus grants the definitive Exodus. He is truly the Son. He is not going to run away from the Father. He returns home, and he leads others home. He is always on the path toward God and thus he leads the way back from exile to the homeland, back to all that is authentic and true.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present. And so, from that moment, the angels’ song of praise has never gone silent. It continues down the centuries in constantly new forms and it resounds ever anew at the celebration of Jesus’ birth. It is only natural that simple believers would then hear the shepherds singing too, and to this day they join in their caroling on the Holy Night, proclaiming in song the great joy that, from then until the end of time, is bestowed on all people.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“The manger is the place where animals find their food. But now, lying in the manger, is he who called himself the true bread come down from heaven, the true nourishment that we need in order to be fully ourselves. This is the food that gives us true life, eternal life. Thus the manger becomes a reference to the table of God, to which we are invited so as to receive the bread of God. From the poverty of Jesus’ birth emerges the miracle in which man’s redemption is mysteriously accomplished.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“This should cause us to reflect- it points toward the reversal of values found in the figure of Jesus Christ and his message. From the moment of his birth, he belongs outside the realm of what is important and powerful in worldly terms. Yet it is this unimportant and powerless child that proves to be the truly powerful one, the one on whom ultimately everything depends. So one aspect of becoming a Christian is having to leave behind what everyone else thinks and wants, the prevailing standards, in order to enter the light of the truth of our being, and aided by that light to find the right path.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Man is a relational being. And if his first, fundamental relationship is disturbed- his relationship with God- then nothing else can truly be in order. This is where the priority lies in Jesus’ message and ministry: before all else, he wants to point man toward the essence of his malady, and to show him- if you are not healed there, then however many good things you may find, you are not truly healed.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“From the moment of his birth, he belongs outside the realm of what is important and powerful in worldly terms. Yet it is this unimportant and powerless child that proves to be the truly powerful one, the one on whom ultimately everything depends.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“To prove this, Luke shows that the genealogy of our Lord, which extends to Adam, contains seventy-two generations,”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“In that sense these two moments—the virgin birth and the real resurrection from the tomb—are the cornerstones of faith. If”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Mary had said: “Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” Jesus corrects her: I am with my father. My father is not Joseph, but another—God himself. It is to him that I belong, and here I am with him. Could Jesus’ divine sonship be presented any more clearly?”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“God is love. But love can also be hated when it challenges us to transcend ourselves. It is not a romantic “good feeling.” Redemption is not “wellness,” it is not about basking in self-indulgence; on the contrary it is a liberation from imprisonment in self-absorption. This liberation comes at a price: the anguish of the Cross. The prophecy of light and that of the Cross belong together.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“So the manger has in some sense become the Ark of the Covenant, in which God is mysteriously hidden among men, and before which the time has come for “ox and ass”—humanity made up of Jews and Gentiles—to acknowledge God.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Iconographic tradition has theologically interpreted the manger and the swaddling cloths in terms of the theology of the Fathers. The child stiffly wrapped in bandages is seen as prefiguring the hour of his death: from the outset, he is the sacrificial victim, as we shall see more closely when we examine the reference to the first-born. The manger, then, was seen as a kind of altar.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“So one aspect of becoming a Christian is having to leave behind what everyone else thinks and wants, the prevailing standards, in order to enter the light of the truth of our being, and aided by that light to find the right path.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Whereas the angel “came” to Mary (Lk 1:28), he merely appears to Joseph in a dream—admittedly a dream that is real and reveals what is real. Once again this shows us an essential quality of the figure of Saint Joseph: his capacity to perceive the divine and his ability to discern. Only a man who is inwardly watchful for the divine, only someone with a real sensitivity for God and his ways, can receive God’s message in this way.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“The two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel devoted to the infancy narratives are not a meditation presented under the guise of stories, but the converse: Matthew is recounting real history, theologically thought through and interpreted, and thus he helps us to understand the mystery of Jesus more deeply.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“La misión divina de Jesús rompe toda medida humana y se convierte para el hombre una y otra vez en un misterio oscuro.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, La Infancia de Jesus

“La Torá prescribía que todo israelita debía presentarse en el templo para las tres grandes fiestas: Pascua, la fiesta de las Semanas y la fiesta de las Tiendas”
― Pope Benedict XVI, La Infancia de Jesus

“According to the evangelist, the angels “said” this. But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“men who felt oppressed not so much by their sins as by their sufferings,”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“How shall man pass into God, unless God has first passed into man? How was mankind to escape this birth into death, unless he were born again through faith, by that new birth from the Virgin, the sign of salvation that is God’s wonderful and unmistakable gift?”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“It is the joy of one whose heart has received a ray of God’s light and who can now see that his hope has been realized- the joy of one who has found what he sought, and has himself been found.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“Greatness emerges from what seems in earthly terms small and insignificant, while worldly greatness collapses and falls. So it is, for example, in the account of the call of David. The youngest of Jesse’s sons, who was busy looking after the sheep, has to be summoned and is anointed king: it is not outward appearance or height of stature that counts, but the heart.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives