Gospel Of St Thomas Quotes

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God." The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. While there is much we may have earned--our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night's sleep--all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition, or our heroic life of prayer. Even our fidelity is a gift, "If we but turn to God," said St. Augustine, "that itself is a gift of God." My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.

justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is dissolution.

It is a surprise to me to like myself; among all the elaborate possibilities I contemplated for my future, that never figured. My hard-won contentment reflects the simple truth that inner peace often hinges on outer peace. In the gnostic gospel of St. Thomas, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.

Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing... and the Gospel according to St. Thomas... was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God that makes all things new.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. —Gnostic Gospel of St. Thomas

It is not without reason that the Evangelist is careful to tell us the smallest details. For these two disciples signify two peoples, the Jews [by John] and the Gentiles [by Peter].

John saw only the linen cloths. He, Peter, also saw the linen cloths because we [Gentiles] do not reject the Old Testament, for as Luke says, "Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures" (Lk 24:45). But in addition Peter saw the napkin which had been on his head: "The head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3). Thus to see the napkin which had been on the head of Jesus is to have faith in the divinity of Christ, which the Jews refused to accept. This napkin is described as not lying with the linen cloths, and rolled up, having a place by itself, because the divinity of Christ is covered over, and it is apart from every creature because of its excellence: "God who is over all be blessed for ever" (Rom 9:5); "Truly, you art a God who hides yourself" (Is 45:15).

The Kingdom is most powerful where we least expect to find it. God does not take away our problems and trials but rather joins us in them. Such is the profound meaning of the incarnation: God becoming a human being. The Kingdom will manifest itself, not because of our efforts to keep trying, even when all effort seems hopeless, but because God loves us so much that God won't be able to stand seeing us struggle and always failing. God will do the impossible. He will give us a new attitude toward suffering. Such is the heart of the Christian ascesis, or self-discipline, and the mystery of transformation. It is the meaning of the Gospel as Therese perceived it.

What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the men he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of his own God-given powers, in the love of others and of God. I mean also the discovery that he cannot find himself in himself alone, but that he must find himself in and through others. Ultimately, these propositions are summed up in two lines of the Gospel: “If any man would save his life, he must lose it,” and, “Love one another as I have loved you.” It is also contained in another saying from St. Paul: “We are all members one of another.

I think sometimes of the lines in the Gospel of St. Thomas. If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

Among living activities the highest is the activity of the intellect, which is to understand. And thus the activity of the intellect is living activity in the highest degree. Now just as the sense in act is identified with the sense‑object in act, so also the intellect in act is identified with the thing understood in act. Since then intellectual understanding is living activity, and to understand is to live, it follows that to understand an eternal reality is to live with an eternal life. But God is an eternal reality, and so to understand and see God is eternal life.

To be Catholic . . . is to live one’s whole life ‘in’ the gospel”, “to rest one’s case in the pierced hands of Jesus Christ the Savior”; “to think of oneself as having been adopted into ‘the whole family in heaven and earth’ as St. Paul teaches”, “to be profoundly conscious of one’s place in an immensely ancient tradition . . . that stretches back to the beginning”. It is to have been set free by Christ for “the Dance” called Charity—with its healing rules of renunciation, self-mastery, and virtue, and its fruits of freedom and joy, glimpsed in the Beatitudes. “The image of Christ. That is a very taxing assignment”, our configuration to Christ. “To be Catholic is to confront all of this in the presence of the Crucifix.

He said He was God, in many ways and at many times in the Gospels. If this was not true, that would make Him either an insane fool, if He believed it, or a blasphemous liar, if He didn’t. His miracles, like His holiness, His love, and His wisdom, make it impossible to call Him a lunatic or a liar; therefore we must call Him Lord. This is the “Lord, liar, or lunatic” argument made famous by C. S. Lewis and Josh McDowell. It goes back to St. Thomas, to the early Christian apologists like St. Justin Martyr, and, as St. Thomas shows here, implicitly to Christ Himself.

63 St. John of the Cross, Counsels to a Religious on How to Reach Perfection, no. 2, p. 662. 

For the Church Fathers, ‘daily bread’ had another spiritual meaning. Origen, an early Church Father, pointed out that the Greek word translated here as ‘daily’ (epiousios) was extremely rare – perhaps even invented by the Gospel writer for a special and unique purpose. St. Jerome translated it in Latin as supersubstantialis – ‘super-substantial.’ He had in mind that as God provided manna from Heaven for the hungry Israelites in the desert, he supernaturally nourishes us with Jesus, the Bread of Life. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, this spiritual meaning is twofold – referring to both the Eucharist and the Word of God. He writes, “in the first meaning, we pray for our Sacramental Bread which is consecrated daily in the Church, so that we receive it in the Sacrament, and thus it profits us unto salvation. ... In the second meaning this bread is the Word of God: ‘Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.

On any list of slam-dunk Christian classics, A Man for All Seasons would have something close to top billing. It’s the story of St. Thomas More, the great English lawyer and politician who refused to sacrifice his conscience in order to approve the divorce and remarriage of the king he served, Henry VIII. Barron has credited More’s life, and the 1966 film that captured it, with getting across three basic insights: We’re all responsible for upholding the rights of others; accepting one’s duties often leads to discomfort; and despite the second point, you don’t have to be gloomy about it.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of the [father] is like a certain woman who was carrying a [jar] full of meal. While she was walking [on the] road, still some distance from home, the handle of the jar broke and the meal emptied out behind her [on] the road. She did not realize it; she had noticed no accident. When she reached her house she set the jar down and found it empty.

At the fulness of time Christ appeared and with the choosing of the twelve Apostles the Church age began. It was the culmination of the plan of God for the ages and though this was God’s perfect testimony being displayed we see that humanity still was humanity in all its failings. The very Apostles (leaders) of the Church failed Christ in running while he was being arrested. The Apostle Peter denied Christ three times. During the ascension of Jesus to heaven some still doubted. When we go further we see James, Peter and other Apostles preferring Jewish converts in ways that were not in accord with the Gospel. Yet it was clear that God was at work and using failed weak vessels for His glory.

The Gospels and Book of Acts chronicle for us the exciting work of the Apostles that Jesus trained and anointed for His service. We see in the Book of Acts the great multiplication of the Church, the order of Deacons established, Councils of leaders to administrate Church decisions. We see great signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation of this Gospel.

The early Church had an overwhelming burden to reach all mankind with the Gospel. Their mission was relentless. Everywhere they went, they shared the love of Jesus.

Since the inception of the Apostolic Church, missions have been at the heartbeat of each disciple. All the Apostles died martyr deaths in bringing the Gospel to new peoples (except St. John who they tried to martyr). There was no compromise to this call to be a living witness of the Good News to all nations as their Lord commanded them.

The Apostle John said to the Church in his day that they should not be surprised if the world hated them. Our Lord Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke that all men would hate us. But our Lord also gives us comfort in these words: 'If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first.

Soon time will be no more, we will see our Lord face to face. We will experience the true ending, the timelessness of the Holy Trinity being worshipped. It is as if the Lord comes to you and says, 'Just a few more years, my child. Share my Gospel. It will all be over soon.' As you look out at the great need for humanity to embrace Christ, those words ring in your ears, and you see the sun setting; it will all soon be over. Are we spending our lives for eternity, and what really matters?

Heaven’s focal point, therefore, is God displaying the wonder of the Gospel afresh and vividly through his atonement and sacrifice on the Cross. We will marvel and worship from generation to generation in endless eternity, lauding the Holy Trinity for His endless love and lowly condensation for men.

In the gnostic gospel of St. Thomas, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.