Jesus Quotes

“But Jesus accepts what we give, blesses it, breaks it open, and magnifies it. Often in ways that we don’t see or cannot see. Or will not be able to see in this lifetime. Who knows what a kind word does? Who knows what a single act of charity will do? Sometimes the smallest word or gesture can change a life.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Newly confident, Mary says yes. Notice that she does so in absolute freedom. No one coerces her. And she was free to say no. Mary also makes her decision without appealing to a man. She doesn’t ask Joseph for permission. Nor does she tell the angel that she must consult with her father. The young woman living in a patriarchal time makes a decision about the coming king. Someone with little power agrees to bring the powerful one into the world: “Let it be with me according to your word.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Often, when we are in trouble, or doubting, or struggling, we rely on others to carry us to God. Just as often we must do the carrying, to help friends who are struggling. This is one of the many benefits of organized religion, as we all need others to help us find God. Even though we may disagree with others and find life in a community occasionally annoying and sometimes scandalous, we need others, because the community is one way that we are carried to God, especially when we are too weak to walk to God on our own. But I wondered about the paralyzed man. He may have felt shame for his illness or for being unable to support himself. Maybe his friends carried him in spite of himself. Sometimes when we are too embarrassed to approach God, someone must bring us there—even drag us there. Many times when I am discouraged, demoralized, or angry at God, it is friends who remind me of God’s great love and who carry me to God. We cannot come to God without others.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“All of our lives are important, even the parts of our past that we have ignored, downplayed, or forgotten. If we open the door to our past, we will discover God there, accompanying us in both happy and sad moments.”
― James J. Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“All of us need to leave things behind in order to follow God. For some of us, it is addictive patterns of behavior, for others an overweening emphasis on our own success, for others the adulation of the crowd. It helps sometimes to look not just at what we’re leaving behind and what God promises us, but also at what God has shown us already. Just look at all those fish.”
― James J. Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Fully human and fully divine” is, to use a loaded word, a mystery. Something not to be solved, but to be pondered.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“No matter how often I pray, how many retreats I make, or how hard I try, I still sin. It is something that I bump up against daily.”
― James J. Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Why had I not understood that this was not simply the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church of his tomb? It was also the Church of the Resurrection.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Gehenna is lovely these days.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“given the loose-fitting clothing of the time, perhaps a great deal of Zacchaeus would have been visible to the crowd below.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Notice that Jesus knows exactly who he is asking to lead his community: a sinner. As all Christian leaders have been, are, and will be, Peter is imperfect. And as all good Christian leaders are, Peter is well aware of his imperfections. The disciples too know who they are getting as their leader. They will not need—or be tempted—to elevate Peter into some semi-divine figure; they have seen him at his worst. Jesus forgives Peter because he loves him, because he knows that his friend needs forgiveness to be free, and because he knows that the leader of his church will need to forgive others many times. And Jesus forgives totally, going beyond what would be expected—going so far as to establish Peter as head of the church.11 It would have made more earthly sense for Jesus to appoint another, non-betraying apostle to head his church. Why give the one who denied him this important leadership role? Why elevate the manifestly sinful one over the rest? One reason may be to show the others what forgiveness is. In this way Jesus embodies the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, who not only forgives the son, but also, to use a fishing metaphor, goes overboard. Jesus goes beyond forgiving and setting things right. A contemporary equivalent would be a tenured professor stealing money from a university, apologizing, being forgiven by the board of trustees, and then being hired as the school’s president. People would find this extraordinary—and it is. In response, Peter will ultimately offer his willingness to lay down his life for Christ. But on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he can’t know the future. He can’t understand fully what he is agreeing to. Feed your sheep? Which sheep? The Twelve? The disciples? The whole world? This is often the case for us too. Even if we accept the call we can be confused about where God is leading us. When reporters used to ask the former Jesuit superior general Pedro Arrupe where the Jesuit Order was going, he would say, “I don’t know!” Father Arrupe was willing to follow, even if he didn’t know precisely what God had in mind. Peter says yes to the unknowable, because the question comes from Jesus. Both Christ’s forgiveness and Peter’s response show us love. God’s love is limitless, unconditional, radical. And when we have experienced that love, we can share it. The ability to forgive and to accept forgiveness is an absolute requirement of the Christian life. Conversely, the refusal to forgive leads ineluctably to spiritual death. You may know families in which vindictiveness acts like a cancer, slowly eating away at love. You may know people whose marriages have been destroyed by a refusal to forgive. One of my friends described a couple he knew as “two scorpions in a jar,” both eagerly waiting to sting the other with barbs and hateful comments. We see the communal version of this in countries torn by sectarian violence, where a climate of mutual recrimination and mistrust leads only to increasing levels of pain. The Breakfast by the Sea shows that Jesus lived the forgiveness he preached. Jesus knew that forgiveness is a life-giving force that reconciles, unites, and empowers. The Gospel by the Sea is a gospel of forgiveness, one of the central Christian virtues. It is the radical stance of Jesus, who, when faced with the one who denied him, forgave him and appointed him head of the church, and the man who, in agony on the Cross, forgave his executioners. Forgiveness is a gift to the one who forgives, because it frees from resentment; and to the one who needs forgiveness, because it frees from guilt. Forgiveness is the liberating force that allowed Peter to cast himself into the water at the sound of Jesus’s voice, and it is the energy that gave him a voice with which to testify to his belief in Christ.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“When Jesus meets the poor during his public ministry and treats them with compassion, and when he directs his followers to care for the poor, it is not simply the stance of someone looking down from on high, as a wealthy person might pity the homeless man he passes on the way to the office. Rather, it is the stance of the person who himself came from a poor town, and who may have felt that compassion for years.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Let it be”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Agapas me?” The word agape means a universal love or selfless love of all human beings. Peter”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Yet a certain hopelessness may be preventing them from seeing Christ. And the fact that Jesus has not met their expectations leads them to conclude that his mission has failed. Their sadness and their sense of what should have happened may prevent them from seeing who walked beside them and from fully accepting the story of the women who reported his resurrection. They are stuck. The disciples understand what it means to feel loss. But here is something we often forget: the Risen Christ understands it too. It is quite possible that, as he died on the Cross, he thought, But Father, I had hoped that my ministry would be a success. I had hoped. After the Resurrection, Jesus does not forget his human experiences; he carries them with him. And he is still human.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“birth of her first child. It read: “Full of unexplainable love. And exhausted to the bone.” Some things are difficult to describe, even for the most articulate, and sometimes the descriptions seem contradictory. It’s hard to put big experiences into words.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“after the birth of her first child. It read: “Full of unexplainable love. And exhausted to the bone.” Some things are difficult to describe, even for the most articulate, and sometimes the descriptions seem contradictory. It’s hard to put big experiences into words.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Yet even in the midst of this suffering—physical pain, abandonment, betrayal, seeing others suffer, and then seeing one’s great project collapse—Jesus did not waver. It must have been an enormous temptation to vacillate in the face of this mountain of suffering. But out of obedience to what the Father is asking he does not. Jesus has done as much as he could. It is finished. Now, into his Father’s hands he commends his spirit. He commends his body. He commends everything. After all the temptations to turn away from the path that the Father was asking him to follow, and even in the face of his intense physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering, Jesus is resolute. Like his mother at the Annunciation, he says—perhaps not knowing fully what it will mean—yes.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“When I once spoke to a spiritual director about loneliness, he asked if I had ever thought about Jesus in that light. When the followers of Jesus look around, he asked me, whom do they see? They see their peers, perhaps hundreds of people with whom they can share their experiences. When the disciples look around, whom do they see? Dozens of people with whom they have much in common. When the apostles look around, whom do they see? They see eleven other men, whom they know well, and with whom they can share their concerns, joys, and hopes, their griefs and anxieties. Even assuming Jesus shared with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, there were parts of him that remained difficult for them to understand. When Jesus looks around, whom does he see? My spiritual director held up his index finger. “There is only Jesus,” he said. He relies on the Father, but in many ways he is alone. This loneliness is complete—and brutal—in the Crucifixion. As if that weren’t enough, he suffers the terrible feeling of outright betrayal by one of his closest friends: Judas Iscariot.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“When I once spoke to a spiritual director about loneliness, he asked if I had ever thought about Jesus in that light. When the followers of Jesus look around, he asked me, whom do they see? They see their peers, perhaps hundreds of people with whom they can share their experiences. When the disciples look around, whom do they see? Dozens of people with whom they have much in common. When the apostles look around, whom do they see? They see eleven other men, whom they know well, and with whom they can share their concerns, joys, and hopes, their griefs and anxieties. Even assuming Jesus shared with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, there were parts of him that remained difficult for them to understand. When Jesus looks around, whom does he see? My spiritual director held up his index finger. “There is only Jesus,” he said. He relies on the Father, but in many ways he is alone. This loneliness is complete—and brutal—in the Crucifixion. As if that weren’t enough, he suffers the terrible feeling of outright betrayal by one of his closest”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Think of parents bringing up children who afford them little respect, disobey them, or are overtly rude. Think of men and women striving to love husbands or wives who are sullen, uncommunicative, or mean. Think of children caring for aging parents who have turned truculent. A friend told me that shortly after his father had developed Alzheimer’s disease, he became astonishingly callous. “Shut up!” he would say to the son who was caring for him. “I hate you!” It’s hard to give yourself, to say in all these situations, “This is my body (energy, emotion, strength), given for you.” Two things that strengthened Jesus can strengthen us. First, Jesus did this for God the Father. God sees our hidden sacrifices and knows their cost, even when others don’t. Second, with this kind of radical self-gift can come new life. We give not because Christianity is a masochistic religion, but because it is a way of love and a path to life. Jesus’s death on the Cross led to an outpouring of love and an explosion of new life. So Jesus says, “Do this in memory of me,” not simply to the priest who celebrates Mass, but to all who would give their own lives out of love.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“In the Jesuit novitiate, we were taught a simple daily prayer called the examination of conscience, also known as the examen. Popularized by St. Ignatius Loyola, it consists of five steps. First, you recall things for which you’re grateful and give thanks for them; second, you review the day, looking for signs of God’s presence; third, you call to mind things for which you are sorry; fourth, you ask for forgiveness from God (or decide to reconcile with the person you have harmed or seek forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation); fifth, you ask for the grace to see God in the following day.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Interestingly, the mascot of the Roman legion garrisoned in the region, the Legio X Fretensis, was a boar, which was emblazoned on its standard, adding yet another layer of meaning to the story.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“You do know that the West Bank means the West Bank of the Jordan River, don’t you?”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Jesus is the most famous victim of capital punishment.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“But it was true. I was constantly surprised how the storied names of biblical locales popped up in the most familiar of circumstances: on a simple map, on a graffitied street sign, or in everyday conversations. “The traffic to Bethlehem was terrible last night!” said a Jesuit over dinner one night. Which still didn’t beat “Gehenna is lovely.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“A few days earlier, during our time in Jerusalem, my friend George and I stumbled upon the Pool of Bethesda, which the Gospel of John names as the place where Jesus healed a paralyzed man.12 John describes it as a pool with “five porticoes.” For centuries, some scholars doubted that the pool ever existed. But archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century uncovered almost the entire complex—including the five porticoes, just as John had described. Seeing not only the site at which Jesus had performed a miracle, but also one confirmation of the Gospels’ accuracy was deeply moving. There were the five porticoes: one, two, three, four, five. There they were. And here he had been.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“twelve and thirty. Because only a single line is written about that long stretch of time, those years are called his “Hidden Life.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“Jesus must make decisions on his own, choices that probably seem confusing, and, in this case, offensive to those around him. This is often true of all of us when we make truly free decisions.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“For a rational, modern mind, talk of the supernatural can be disturbing—an embarrassment.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land