Quotes about Participation

What we need is evangelicals and Catholics who discern the primary demand of our time: a celebration of our heavenly participation in the eternal Word of God. Only a heavenly minded Christian faith will do us any earthly good.

Augustine's concept of time was sacramental: time participates in the eternity of God's life, and it is this participation that is able to gather past, present, and future together into one.

The ecclesial body was the sacramental reality to which the Eucharist pointed and in which it participated.

The central paschal event - Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension - is something Christians participate in: God "made us alive with Christ," Paul insists (Eph. 2:5). He "raised us up with Christ" (Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1). The result of this sharing in Christ is that believers participate in heavenly realities. We are seated with Christ "in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6; Eph. 1:3).

Precisely because heaven is already present on earth, the moral lives of Christians on earth are to reflect their heavenly participation.

One of the most important differences between Judaism and Christianity is that we were a people before we had a religion.........throughout it all, it is the participation in the community that defines us as Jews; the creeds and rituals are secondary.

As God's children, we are not to be observers; we're to participate actively in the Lord's work. Spectators sit and watch, but we are called to use our spiritual gifts and serve continually.

Every member must work or quit. No honorary members.

As citizens of the United States, we are stewards of this magnificent thing called democracy.

Full participation in the life of God's Kingdom and in the vivid companionship of Christ comes to us only through appropriate exercise in the disciplines for life in the spirit. Those disciplines alone can become for average Christians the conditions upon which the spiritual life is made indubitably real.

Believe our only hope for leaders to increasingly work in the way of Jesus, for the glory of Jesus, in the power of Jesus and under the direction of Jesus will be as they have passed through stages that help them learn the soul work of surrender, abandonment, contentment and participation. There simply are no shortcuts.

We don't consume the merits of Christ or the services of the church. We are participants, not spectators.