54 Quotes by Eugene Kennedy

This is the homely heart of Incarnation, this meeting of God in man with men and women, this simple face of divine graciousness in ordinary life rather than in the hymns of church fathers or in the dry elaborations of theologians.

To be human is nothing less than to be caught in the great congested pilgrimage of existence and to join ourselves freely to it in the face of the evidence of its never-ending troubles.

(re: Matthew 7:21 - "Knowing the correct password - saying 'Master, Master', for instance - isn't going to get you anywhere with Me. What's required is serious obedience doing what my Father wills.")"This is a passage for all those who understand, as Jesus has said, that belief in Him is proved in ordinary life rather than in extraordinary practices, and that the good Shepherd whose simple garb matches his mission, stands at the center of the true Kingdom.

(re: Matthew 8)"[Jesus'] almost refusal to allow the complications of men to interfere with the loving work of God."[for the leper} "...this is not a media event, it is a personal experience...he is in effect, to minimize the wonder by returning to the ordinary rituals.""One wonders still at the cleanness of the incident...God's spirit hovers now as it always has over simpler scenes; He is found directly more often in truthful human exchanges than in convoluted efforts to escape humanity.

Mercy is a source of life because we breathe our own spirits through it into the lives of others.

(re: Matthew 4)" 'Give in for now': what a strange thing for Jesus to say to a steadfast and protesting prophet; and yet what a comforting thing for those of us who cannot live in fiercely absolute ways....Jesus the Lord enters our life as it is and calls us not away but more deeply into it.

John (the Baptist) stands as prophets do to this very day, as an unyielding presence unsettling us and leaving us not quite sure of how we feel about him....And yet John seems hard to know, hard to like even though we stand back in admiration of him. We react the same way to most absolute figured.

The truth of faith is a slender, glowing element that runs through even the seemingly ordinary and undramatic moments of existence. Even at low intensity, it is a steady source of illumination. Such religious truth is powerful even when it seems faint, even when it seems obscured by the larger events of history.

The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?