Entering the Twofold Mystery Quotes

“Grace builds on nature, by all means. Any vocational discernment must first ascertain if sufficient aptitude exists for consecration in freedom. It is irresponsible to let someone undertake a sacred commitment he or she does not have the resources to keep. Yet it would be wrong to see celibacy just as a function of natural disposition. I wonder, indeed, whether we have not come to take it too much for granted, as part of the package of priestly or religious life?”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“An analogous challenge faces the Church as a whole as we strive to come to terms with a harrowing catalogue of misconduct and abuse. It is not only a matter of bringing individual cases to justice. It is a matter of seeking healing for the ecclesial body, which has carried this legacy as a pollutant for far too long. People are calling for action, for heads on platters. The prevailing sentiment, understandably, is one of anger. Anger, prudently channelled, can serve righteousness. But it can also blind. I perceive a certain dull-sightedness in much that is said about celibacy.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“We must be no less careful not to leave the action of God out of the equation. How often what seems to us happenstance, or even great misfortune, turns out to provide occasions for God’s providence to work. We must look out, in ourselves and in others, for the call inherent in the way our lives turn out in fact, even though we might have planned them differently.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“These are words from another register, but they express, I think, the sense of St Paul’s imperative: I must assume responsibility for what I have become, whatever, whoever, has played a role in making me that way. Only then am I free to be carried and freed. Only then am I fit to take my share in carrying others – and so to find my place in a communion of charity that is the closest we get, here and now, to the splendour of the kingdom of heaven.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“Most of us live with painful experiences from our childhood. They get the better of us only if we lock ourselves within them, seeing them as an excuse for our inadequacies through life. We must move on. […] We will not become adult until we learn no longer to blame our parents.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“These days, there are voices in the Church that rise in predictable choruses of denunciation. They delight in decrying the decadence of manners, the breakdown of morals, the frittering away of faith. The Church has a duty to tell right from wrong, by all means. Its words should be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’. But above all the Church must follow in the footsteps of its Master. It is a moot point whether our times are really so much more depraved than Palestine under Pontius Pilate. Yet nowhere do we hear Jesus upbraid his Father: ‘Why must I be incarnate in the midst of this?”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“rejoice in the suffering itself, nor in iniquity, God forbid. We rejoice because we are thereby given the grace to play a tiny share in the victory of goodness over evil. We rejoice because we are graced to let Christ’s presence spread into a world that knows him not, has no time for him, and tends merely to laugh at the gift of his love, as the onlookers do in Tintoretto’s picture. We rejoice in a God who cares to save uncaring mankind.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“We rejoice because we are graced to let Christ’s presence spread into a world that knows him not, has no time for him, and tends merely to laugh at the gift of his love, as the onlookers do in Tintoretto’s picture. We”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“Yet for these he died. To ‘share in Christ’s suffering’ is not to enter some rarefied spiritual experience. It is to be plunged into what the Fathers called the mysterium iniquitatis, the reality of sin.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“unrighteous should kindly be kept out. Jesus answers sharply: ‘I have not come to call the righteous’ (5.32).”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“The people are so absorbed in present need that there is no space on their horizon for the future or the past, for where they’ve come from, where they’re going.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“is thereby linked to our sinful condition as such, our fallen humanity, and rightly so. For what is sin, if not a lack of faith and trust, the presumption of assuming that God cannot, will not, reach or help us? God’s oracle to Moses at Marah, once the people had drunk, merits attention.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“man is born to work,’ says Isaac of Stella. We have placed our hand on the plough. We have resolved to build God’s kingdom here, in this humble monastery. God grant us courage, strength and manliness to stay faithful to the end.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“Our role in the Church is to reveal the kingdom of heaven; to show others, by our lives, who Jesus is. It did not occur to St Benedict to articulate our calling in those terms, but he would certainly have approved of them. The Rule is a guide for becoming Christlike.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion

“Other pursuits of autonomy are more ambiguous. Think of advertising’s rhetoric of entitlement. How often are we not told we ‘deserve’ this thing or that: an unhealthy dessert, some gadgetry, a nice holiday? ‘You have a right to realize your desires.’ That is the gospel of marketing. If we believe it, only a small step keeps us from a promise more ambitious still, which tells us: ‘You can become what you like.’ This assumption has saturated Western consciousness to such an extent that our society suffers from chronic discontent. Why? Because it cannot be realized. We are told we are supreme masters of our fate. If we like (and have money), we can change the way we live, look and talk. We can change our name and nationality, even our gender.”
― Erik Varden, Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion