This Sunday’s readings: Matthew 12:30-32

Reflections

Of course God will forgive me; that’s His job.
~ Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856, German literary critic, writer

Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick.
~ Fulton J. Sheen, 1895-1979, American Catholic archbishop

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That we are capable, only of being what we are, remains our unforgivable sin.
~ Gene Wolfe, 1931-2019, Am. Author, The Claw of the Conciliator

Christian tradition thinks of genuine repentance not as a human possibility but as a gift of God. It is not just that we do not like being wrong, but that almost invariably the others are not completely right either. As Carl Gustav Jung observed after World War II, most confessions come as a mixture of repentance, self-defense, and even some lust for revenge. We admit wrongdoing, justify ourselves, and attack, all in one breath.
~ Miroslav Volf, 1956- , Theologian/Author

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.
~ James Baldwin, 1924-1987, Author, Notes of a Native Son

Forgiveness is an outrage against straight-line dues-paying morality.
~ Lewis Smedes, 1921-2002, Author, Forgive and Forget

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence…. No philosophy is completely disinterested.
~ Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, English writer, Philosopher

This Sunday’s readings: Luke 13:1-9

Reflections

Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the world. It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.
~ E.A. Bucchianeri, author, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own beliefs so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among them.
~ Peter Singer, 1946- , Australian philosopher, Practical Ethics

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A lot of you cared, just not enough.
~ Jay Asher, 1975- , writer/novelist

I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
~ Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989, novelist/dramatist

“The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it’s a decent girl?”

“Wouldn’t I know which one I was?” “Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”
~ Derek Landy, 1974- , author/screenwriter

There’s nothing wrong with conceptualization per se; but when we take our opinions about any event to be some kind of absolute truth and fail to see that they are opinions, then we suffer.
~ Charlotte Joko Beck, 1917-2011, teacher/author

A God who could pardon without justice might one of these days condemn without reason.
~ C.H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892, famed London preacher