Quotes from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Purity of heart is what enables us to see.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“The great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought?

The answer is very simple: God.... He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope and love. It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think this is too little. Yes indeed, God's power works quietly in this world, but it is the true and the lasting power. Again and again, God's cause seems to be in its death throes. Yet over and over again it proves to be the thing that truly endures and saves.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Praying actualizes and deepens our communion with God. Our prayer can and should arise above all from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, from our shame over sin, and from our gratitude from the good. It can and should be a wholly personal prayer.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“The book is intended to help believing Christians “who today have been made insecure by scientific research and critical discussion, so that they may hold fast to faith in the person of Jesus Christ as the bringer of salvation and Savior of the world”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Jesus’ teaching is not the product of human learning, of whatever kind. It originates from immediate contact with the Father, from “face-to-face” dialogue—from the vision of the one who rests close to the Father’s heart. It is the Son’s word. Without this inner grounding, his teaching would be pure presumption.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Silently evolving here was the attitude before God that Paul explored in his theology of justification: These are people who do not flaunt their achievements before God. They do not stride into God’s presence as if they were partners able to engage with him on an equal footing; they do not lay claim to a reward for what they have done. These are people who know that their poverty also has an interior dimension; they are lovers who simply want to let God bestow his gifts upon them and thereby to live in inner harmony with God’s nature and word. The saying of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux about one day standing before God with empty hands, and holding them open to him, describes the spirit of these poor ones of God: They come with empty hands; not with hands that grasp and clutch, but with hands that open and give and thus are ready to receive from God’s bountiful goodness. Because this is the case, there is no opposition between Matthew, who speaks of the poor in spirit, and Luke, in whose Gospel the Lord addresses the “poor” without further qualification.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“La interpretación de la Biblia puede convertirse, de hecho, en un instrumento del Anticristo. No lo dice solamente Soloviev, es lo que afirma implícitamente el relato mismo de la tentación. A partir de resultados aparentes de la exegesis científica se han escrito los peores y más destructivos libros de la figura de Jesús, que desmantelan la fe.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Jesus was praying while he received Baptism (cf. Lk 3:21). Looking at the events in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“When God is regarded as a secondary matter that can be set aside temporarily or permanently on account of more important things, it is precisely these supposedly more important things that come to nothing.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“El tentador no es tan burdo como para proponernos directamente adorar al diablo. Sólo nos propone decidirnos por lo racional, preferir un mundo planificado y organizado, en el que Dios puede ocupar un lugar, pero como asunto privado, sin interferir en nuestros propósitos esenciales.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“la tierra se concede para que ésta sea un lugar de obediencia, un espacio abierto a Dios y para que el país se libere de la abominación de la idolatría. Un contenido esencial del concepto de libertad y de tierra es la idea de la obediencia a Dios y del modo correcto de tratar el mundo.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“así, como personas que han abierto su corazón a Dios y a los demás en reciprocidad, pueden recibir el pan del modo adecuado.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Puesto que este bautismo comporta un reconocimiento de la culpa y una petición de perdón para poder empezar de nuevo, este sí a la plena voluntad de Dios encierra también, en un mundo marcado por el pecado, una expresión de solidaridad con los hombres, que se han hecho culpables, pero que tienden a la justicia. Sólo a partir de la cruz y la resurrección se clarifica todo el significado de este acontecimiento.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“But, in order to be the community of Jesus’ poor, the Church has constant need of the great ascetics. She needs the communities that follow them, living out poverty and simplicity so as to display to us the truth of the Beatitudes. She needs them to wake everyone up to the fact that possession is all about service, to contrast the culture of affluence with the culture of inner freedom, and thereby to create the conditions for social justice as well.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Testament in order to repel the tempter:”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“The Samaritan, the foreigner, makes himself the neighbor and shows me that I have to learn to be a neighbor deep within and that I already have the answer in myself. I have to become like someone in love, someone whose heart is open to being shaken up by another’s need. Then I find my neighbor, or—better—then I am found by him.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“By creating the Third Order, though, Francis did accept the distinction between radical commitment and the necessity of living in the world. The point of the Third Order is to accept with humility the task of one’s secular profession and its requirements, wherever one happens to be, while directing one’s whole life to that deep interior communion with Christ that Francis showed us. “To own goods as if you owned nothing” (cf. 1 Cor 7:29ff.)—to master this inner tension, which is perhaps the more difficult challenge, and, sustained by those pledged to follow Christ radically, truly to live it out ever anew—that is what the third orders are for. And they open up for us what this Beatitude can mean for all.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“The process of continually rereading and drawing out new meanings from words would not have been possible unless the words themselves were already open to it from within.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“The Law has become a person. When we encounter Jesus, we feed on the living God himself, so to speak; we truly eat “bread from heaven.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil - no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What's real us what us right there in front of us - power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs. God is the issue: Is he real, reality itself, or isn't he? Is he good or do we have to invent the good ourselves?”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“oímos cada vez con mayor claridad la promesa de que la salvación de Dios llegará a todos los pueblos. Oímos cada vez más claramente que el Dios de Israel, que es el mismo único Dios, el verdadero Dios, el creador del cielo y de la tierra, el Dios de todos los pueblos y de todos los hombres, en cuyas manos está su destino, en definitiva que ese Dios no quiere abandonar a los pueblos a su suerte.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“In every age, man’s questioning has focused not only on his ultimate origin; almost more than the obscurity of his beginnings, what preoccupies him is the hiddenness of the future that awaits him. Man wants to tear aside the curtain; he wants to know what is going to happen, so that he can avoid perdition and set out toward salvation.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Those who do not harden their hearts to the pain and need of others, who do not give evil entry to their souls, but suffer under its power and so acknowledge the truth of God—they are the ones who open the windows of the world to let the light in. It is to those who mourn in this sense that great consolation is promised. The second Beatitude is thus intimately connected with the eighth: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:10). The mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil; it is a way of resisting models of behavior that the individual is pressured to accept because “everyone does it.” The world cannot tolerate this kind of resistance; it demands conformity. It considers this mourning to be an accusation directed against the numbing of consciences. And so it is. That is why those who mourn suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness. Those who mourn are promised comfort; those who are persecuted are promised the Kingdom of God—the same promise that is made to the poor in spirit.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion—that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms. Moral”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil—no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What’s real is what is right there in front of us—power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs. God”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“To the extent that it remains true to itself, the historical method not only has to investigate the biblical word as a thing of the past, but also has to let it remain in the past.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“The life of this Kingdom is Christ’s continuing life in those who are his own. In the heart that is no longer nourished by the vital power of Christ, the Kingdom ends; in the heart that is touched and transformed by it, the Kingdom begins….”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“It is a precisely datable historical event having the full weight that real historical happenings have; like them, too, it happens once only; it is contemporary with all times, but not in the way that a timeless myth would be.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

“we must not forget that people came to Christ from every kind of background and that the early Christian community included more than a few priests and former Pharisees.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, quote from Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

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