Preparing for Christmas Quotes

“Amazing that we made Jesus into the consummate answer giver because that is not what he usually does. He more often leads us right onto the horns of our own human-made dilemmas, where we are forced to meet God and be honest with ourselves. He creates problems for us more than resolves them, problems that very often cannot be resolved by all-or-nothing thinking but only by love and forgiveness.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“We have become human doings more than human beings, and the verb “rest,” as Jesus uses it, is largely foreign to us.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“The problem is solved. Now go and utterly enjoy all remaining days. Not only is it “Always Advent,” but every day can now be Christmas because the one we thought we were just waiting for has come once and for all.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Friday of the Third Week of Advent Isaiah 56:1–3a, 6–8; John 5:33–36 The works that the Father has given me to
complete, the very works that I am doing,
testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. —John 5:36 A Bias Toward Action Jesus says, “I am not asking you to just believe my words, look at my actions, or the ‘works that I do.’ ” Actions speak for themselves, whereas words we can argue about on a theoretical level. The longer I have tried to follow Jesus, the more I can really say that I no longer believe in Jesus. I know Jesus. I know him because I have often taken his advice, taken his risks, and it always proves itself to be true! Afterward we do not believe, we know. Jesus is not telling us to believe unbelievable things, as if that would somehow please God. He is much more saying to us, “Try this,” and you will see for yourself that it is true. But that initial trying is always a leap of faith into some kind of action or practice. The Scriptures very clearly teach what we call today a “bias toward action.” It is not just belief systems or dogmas and doctrines, as we have often made it. The Word of God is telling us very clearly that if you do not do it, you, in fact, do not believe it and have not heard it. The only way that we become convinced of our own sense of power, dignity and the power of God is by actually doing it—by crossing a line, a line that has a certain degree of non-sensicalness and unprovability to it—and that’s why we call it faith. In the crossing of that line, and acting in a new way based on what we believe the kingdom values are, then and only then, can we hear in a new way and really believe what we say we believe in the first place. In the years ahead I see Christianity moving from mere belief systems to an invitation to “practices” whereby we then realize things on a new level. (Jesuits call them “exercises,” Methodists call them “methods,” Gandhi called them “experiments with truth.”)”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“The kingdom is finally to be identified as the Lord Jesus himself. When we say “Come, Lord Jesus” on this Christmas Day, we are preferring his Lordship to any other loyalty system or any other final frame of reference. If Jesus is Lord, than Caesar is not! If Jesus is Lord, then the economy and stock market are not! If Jesus is Lord, then my house and possessions, family and job are not! If Jesus is Lord, than I am not! That multileveled implication was obvious to first-century members of the Roman Empire because the phrase “Caesar is Lord” was the empire’s loyalty test and political bumper sticker. They, and others, knew they had changed “parties” when they welcomed Jesus as Lord instead of the Roman emperor as their savior.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“We have moved to a level where we have made happiness and contentment largely impossible. We have created a pseudo-happiness, largely based in having instead of being. We are so overstimulated that the ordinary no longer delights us. We cannot rest or abide in our naked being in God, as Jesus offers us.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Whenever we get defensive or go emotionally up and down, this is a sign that we are attached to a self-image.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Let me sum it up this way: We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Without action and lifestyle decisions, without concrete practices, words are dangerous and largely illusory.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Jesus is not telling us to believe unbelievable things, as if that would somehow please God. He is much more saying to us, “Try this,” and you will see for yourself that it is true. But that initial trying is always a leap of faith into some kind of action or practice.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“It is not that the Word of God is threatening us with fire and brimstone, but rather it is saying that goodness is its own reward and evil is its own punishment. If we do the truth and live connected in the world as it really is, we will be blessed and grace can flow, and the consolation will follow from the confrontation with the Big Picture. If we create a false world of separateness and egocentricity, it will not work and we will suffer the consequences even now. In Catholic theology we call this our tradition of “natural law.” In short, we are not punished for our sins, but by our sins!”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Their self-image was based on mere psychological information instead of theological truth. What the Gospel promises us is that we are objectively and inherently children of God (see 1 John 3: 2). This is not psychological worthiness; it is ontological, metaphysical and substantial, and cannot be gained or lost. When this given God image becomes our self-image, we are home free, and the Gospel is just about the best good news that we can hope for!”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“One of the major problems in the spiritual life is our attachment to our own self-image—either positively or negatively created. We have to begin with some kind of identity, but the trouble is that we confuse this idea of ourselves with who we actually are in God. Ideas about things are not the things in themselves. We all have to start by forming a self-image, but the problem is our attachment to it, our need to promote it and protect it and have others like it. What a trap!”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Just as the Spirit always makes one out of two, so the evil one invariably makes two out of one!”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Time is exactly what we do not have. What decreases in a culture of affluence is precisely and strangely time—along with wisdom and friendship. These are the very things that the human heart was created for, that the human heart feeds on and lives for. No wonder we are producing so many depressed, unhealthy and even violent people, while also leaving a huge carbon footprint on this poor planet.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“It is strange that when people have so much, they are so anxious about not having enough—to do, to see, to own, to fix, to control, to change.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Don’t name darkness good, which is the seduction that has happened to many of our people on both left and right. They have not been taught wisdom or discernment for the most part. The most common way to release our inner tension is to cease calling darkness darkness and to pretend it is passable light. Another way to release your inner tension is to stand angrily, obsessively against it, but then you become a mirror image of it. Everyone can usually see this but you! Our Christian wisdom is to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“Whatever you trust to validate you and secure you is your real god, and the Gospel is saying, “Will the real God please stand up?”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“So many of us accept either a successful or a negative self-image inside of a system of false images to begin with!”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

“The more that we can put together, the more that we can “forgive” and allow, the more we can include and enjoy, the more we tend to be living in the Spirit.”
― Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent