quote | ambition

When I was young, I longed to be a saint. What was I longing for? I think it was for certainty that my life had been, in the most profound sense, a ‘success’—that great and glorious success that is sanctity. We revere the saints, we imitate them, theirs is the true and lasting glory. Very clearly, this desire is, unconsciously, as worldly as that of the writer who wants to write a masterpiece or the politician who yearns to be prime minister or president. None of these ambitions has the least to do with what Jesus preached—that lowliness, that love for last place, that readiness to die and be forgotten…. To be concerned with oneself in any way, to watch one’s growth in ‘holiness’ or ‘prayer’, to be spiritually ambitious, all this Jesus earnestly sets his face against.

Sr. Wendy Beckett

quote | the downward pull

Jesus' compassion is characterized by a downward pull. That is what disturbs us. We cannot even think about ourselves in terms other than those of an upward pull, an upward mobility in which we strive for better lives, higher salaries and more prestigious positions. Thus, we are deeply disturbed by a God who embodies a downward movement. Instead of striving for a higher position, more power and more influence, Jesus moves, as Karl Barth says, from "the heights to the depths, from victory to defeat, from riches to poverty, from triumph to suffering, from life to death."
Henri Nouwen