James Carroll Quotes

#1. She had discovered within herself the unlikely gift for functioning with equilibrium and efficiency inside a full-blown, unending nightmare. [A Red Cross worker during WWII in Italy]

James Carroll

#2. Discipleship is a commitment to the memory and presence of Jesus Christ that makes a difference in how a life is lived, driving thought and behavior week in and week out.

James Carroll

#3. Back home, this Catholic kid was accustomed to a Protestant culture's condescension, but here he could see for himself the world-historic glories of Catholicism ... [A Catholic American soldier's reaction to seeing St. Peter's Basilica during WWII.]

James Carroll

#4. God suffers with you!

James Carroll

#5. The I AM of God, of Jesus, is the "I am" of every person, and it consists in every person being aware of herself or himself.

James Carroll

#6. Humans are reeds of straw who think. Reeds of straw who know. Reeds of straw who choose. Reeds of straw who love. Reeds of straw who willingly surpass themselves.

James Carroll

#7. Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.

James Carroll

#8. Experience is a flow from event to consequence, with moral events defined by human choice.

James Carroll

#9. To each one, the encounter with Jesus is unique, however it occurs. That no one possesses Jesus, or fully understands him, is why the movement toward Jesus can never be made alone.

James Carroll

#10. Scholars tell us that there was no word in ancient Latin or Greek for "self" as it is understood in contemporary usage.

James Carroll

#11. For Christian faith, the death of God is not a question of his disappearance. On the contrary, it is one of the places where He is most fully present. Jesus is not Man standing in for God. He is a sign that God is incarnate in human frailty and futility.

James Carroll

#12. There are so many flaws, .. I don't think they can be fixed.

James Carroll

#13. The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.

James Carroll

#14. The nobility of what humans could be capable of, if only they weren't human.

James Carroll

#15. Forgiveness as the response to the inevitability of failure. Suffering understood as part of life. Trust as the other side of anguish. A permanent thankfulness.

James Carroll

#16. The absence of Jesus is the mode of his presence.

James Carroll

#17. Asked to describe the Holy One, Jesus told the story of the father whose bond with his son, no matter the son's unworthiness, was unbreakable.

James Carroll

#18. Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough ... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy.

James Carroll

#19. the grace of what makes him different, is what enables him to "stand up.

James Carroll

#20. Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

James Carroll

#21. The whole story of human and personal progress is an unmitigated tale of denials today-denials of rest, denials or repose and comfort and ease and pleasure-that tomorrow may be richer.

James Carroll

#22. A naive belief in supernatural powers has been dispelled,

James Carroll

#23. Respect for everyone he met. The preference of service over power. The rejection of violence. Israel - its Law and worship - as the primal source of meaning.

James Carroll

#24. Indeed, an ecumenical spirit extending to the worldly, to the flawed, to the politically compromised, and to the sexually stigmatized was what separated Jesus from his rigorously puritanical mentor.

James Carroll

#25. Scientific naturalism has proven incapable of accounting for a whole range of human experiences, from simple self-awareness to love.

James Carroll

#26. Separated Peter from the vile and suicidal Judas was that he, Peter, had lived long enough to find his offense transformed - through no merit of his own - by the loving acceptance of Jesus. The humiliated Peter was, in the same moment, the forgiven Peter.

James Carroll

#27. Not satisfied with endlessly pulling drowning men from the torrents rushing past, Day went upstream to see who was throwing the poor bastards into the water in the first place - and

James Carroll

#28. Asceticism was not necessary for holiness.

James Carroll

#29. This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications.8

James Carroll

#30. Communion over loneliness. Death not an end, but a beginning. At home in the absolute - and absolutely unknown - future.

James Carroll

#31. The Holy One's nearness, the readiness to name the Holy One as God, and the recognition of God as Father.

James Carroll

#32. There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

James Carroll

#33. Restlessness, therefore, is not to be regretted, but marshaled. Humans live toward.

James Carroll

#34. The God who makes the promise keeps the promise.

James Carroll