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Kurien Kunnumpuram quotes
In recent times, we are becoming increasingly more aware of the cosmic dimension of salvation. The destiny of humankind and that of the cosmos are inextricably intertwined. In the past, Christians often thought of their relationship to the world in terms of domination, possession, use and enjoyment. There was little awe and wonder before the mystery of the universe. This arrogant and irreverent attitude to creation is largely responsible for the serious ecological crisis was are facing today.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
It is our Christian task to make ourselves increasingly more free. As one of the beautiful hymns has it: "It is a long road to freedom”. There is a great danger that we will give in to external force or internal compulsion, thus jeopardizing our freedom.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
That is why individuals and peoples need a "healing of memories”. This does not mean that they have to forget past events. Rather, they have to learn to look at them in a new way. Instead of remaining prisoners of the past, they have to recover their freedom to forgive. As the pope says: "The deadly cycle of revenge must be replaced by the new-found liberty of forgiveness.”.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Pope John Paul II is a tireless champion of peace who has dealt with the theme of peace often and at some length. Like his predecessors, John Paul II sees a close connection between justice and peace. John Paul II believes that justice is rooted in love and "finds its most significant expression in mercy”. Hence, justice, "if separated from merciful love, becomes cold and cutting.”.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Uniformity is the death of life. Wherever there is life, there is diversity.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Transcendence is the way God is immanent. God is present in every created reality, without being identified with it. This is the meaning of God's transcendence.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
The Church in India has to join hands with all subaltern groups – the Dalits, the tribal people and women – in their struggle for liberation and justice. For centuries, the Dalits have been victims of oppression. In recent years violence against them has grown. The tribal people, too, are subjected to various forms of injustice.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
If the world had a finite reality as its goal, then it has only a limited possibility of growth. But when the world has the Infinite God as its goal, it has endless possibilities of growth and development.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
The poor are becoming increasingly aware of the injustice of the system that condemns them to a life of indigence and misery. And they are opposing the system courageously, sometimes even violently. This leads to a situation of conflict.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
All this calls for an attitudinal change in the Church. An inward looking Church gives undue importance to rite and rubrics, orthodoxy and discipline. But God-ward looking Church is concerned with the great human problem of living together in freedom and equality, love, justice and peace as well as in tune with the rhythm of nature. For the world, not the Church, is the primary object of God's love.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Christian spirituality is a spirituality of hope. St. Paul believes that Christians are those who have hope (1Thess 4:13). Now to hope is to look forward to the new, to what is not yet there, and strive to bring it about. Hence hope is forward-looking and forward moving. That is why a spirituality of hope is a spirituality of change. According to Karl Rahner it is a sin against hope to refuse to change. Those who refuse to change regard the past or the present as the final state of humankind. We are not yet in the new heavens and the new earth. We are on our way to them. And so our spirituality is a spirituality of hope and change.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
It [Vatican II] does not look upon the ‘religious' as one dimension among other dimensions of human existence. The religious dimension intersects with other dimensions. That is why the Council could speak of ‘the supremely human character' of the Church's religious mission.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Christian hope asks us to regard every stage in the growth of a person and every phase in the development of the Church as merely provisional. It has to be transcended. We are still on our way to the final Kingdom.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
God did not create the world in order to get anything for himself. In fact, there is no need of God's that we can supply, no luxury of His that we can provide. Actually, God created the world in order to bestow his blessings on his creatures and to give them a share in his own goodness.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
The term spirituality is misleading. It gives the impression that we are concerned only with the soul and its activities like prayer and contemplation. The realm of the spirit is thought of as distinct from the material realm, the realm of work, of science and economics. Underlying this dichotomy is the Greek understanding of the human person as a composite of soul and body or as a soul temporarily housed in the body. The classical example of this is Plato's image of the human person as the charioteer in the chariot.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
To work for peace and reconciliation is central to the mission of the Church. For the Church exists in order to carry on the saving work of Jesus under the guidance of the Spirit. And his saving work is interpreted in the New Testament as reconciliation and peace-making. According to Paul, God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to himself.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
The one mission of the Church receives its specification from the actual context in which it is exercised in the concrete situations in which it is fulfilled.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Peace is the gift of God who through the death and resurrection of Christ, reconciled humans with himself and with one another. However, peace is also a human achievement since it is to be ushered in through the practice of love and justice.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Now if the Church's mission is to collaborate with God in his work for the wholeness of the human person, the human community and the cosmos, then this demands that it care for the earth, that it be concerned about life and that it be committed to people. The Church's task is to work along with God for the creation of a new human society which is consciously rooted in God, which is characterized by freedom, equality, love, justice and peace and which lives in harmony and communion with nature.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Mission of the Church is to collaborate with God in his work for the wholeness of the human person, the human community and the cosmos according to the pattern revealed in Jesus Christ.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
The Church has consistently taught that justice and charity are the foundations of peace. It may be right to think of "charity as the soul and justice as the substance of international peace.”.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
Any genuine experience of God will send us out to serve those whom God loves. And working with people will make us aware of how much we are in need of God, of God's help and guidance. This will gradually usher in a rhythm of prayer and work – prayer leading to work and work leading to prayer. So the integration of prayer and work takes place existentially.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
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