Davis Mooney

“When the younger son returns, Christ reports for us the words of the son to his father, but does not give anything about a speech of the father to his son. For in reality, the father substitutes kisses for words and replaces assertion with expression and eyes speak for the tongue.”

Rev. Dr. Ibrahim Sa’id, Quoted in Poet & Peasant by Kenneth Bailey

“For my entire life I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But, I suddenly saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and, most of all, my subtle self-righteousness. I saw how much of a complainer I was and how much of my thinking and feeling was ridden with resentment. I was the elder son for sure, but just as lost as his younger brother, even though I had stayed ‘home’ all my life.”

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

“These parables are truly a reassurance to those lost sheep who have strayed. But they are also a warning – and this aspect of their message is generally missed. Men and women everywhere prefer to build communities that affirm their choices, that share their values, that keep out those who might bring unrighteousness to their neighborhoods.”

Gary Burge, Jesus, The Middle Eastern Storyteller

“The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny.”

 JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King

“The mystery of the incarnation reveals to us the spiritual dimension of human solidarity. We cannot live in intimate communion with Jesus without being sent to our brothers and sisters who belong to that same humanity that Jesus has accepted as his own. Thus intimacy manifests itself as solidarity and solidarity as intimacy.” 

Henri Nouwen, Lifesigns

“The picture at Jesus’ baptism is of God stepping out of heaven to address people, of God entering into their everyday world. Clearly God takes the initiative to show humanity the way to him.” 

Darrell Bock

“The announcement of John’s birth begins a series of great events that ring through the corridors of time and eternity as God’s salvation comes to fruition.”

Darrell L. Bock

“Aged priest tending the fires of incense,
You mistrust the angel’s sudden visit,
Counting pledges of answered prayer nonsense
For an old man, an old woman, neither fit.
You temporize, reluctant to submit.
I, too, inquire, “What’s the evidence?”
Even as I stoke altar fires with sweet incense.”

Christine H. Boldt, “Dumbstruck”

“I don’t think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to you and everybody else, and for me this is always the conflict between an attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of our times. It’s hard to believe always but more so in the world we live in now.”

Flannery O’Connor