In this sense, the methodological form that comes into play here is ultimately quite simple: Scripture is interpreted by Scripture. Scripture interprets itself. Attentive listening to Scripture’s own internal self-interpretation is very characteristic of Redemptoris Mater.

We dwell in the place in which we are not traveling but are at home. The landscape of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ is our home. It is a landscape that we are never finished exploring, for new prospects are always emerging. Nevertheless, it is familiar to us and becomes all the more familiar the longer we reside there.

The word of God can require something of me today that it did not require yesterday; this means that, if I am to hear this challenge, I must be fundamentally open and listening.

Thus it seems that the Cross of Christ, laden with every sinful refusal of man, must stand at the very last extremity of hell; indeed, it must stand beyond hell, where the Son is forsaken by the Father in a way that only he can know.

The Word, then, came into the world – came to what was his, but those who were his did not receive him. He beamed into the gloom, but the darkness turned away. Thus had love’s revelation to choose a struggle of life and death. God came into the world, but a bristling barrier of spears and shields was his welcome. His grace began to trickle, but the world made itself supple and impenetrable, and the drops fell to the ground.

Faith’s table is always laid, whether the invited guest sits down or stays away with a thousand excuses and pretexts.

Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself.

When everything is blocked off,′ I was told by a dear friend who lives in Erfurt, “one must try to live in the interstices.′ Apparently, the Christians of the Apocalypse, though they did not bear the sign of the beast, had discovered or created such spaces. From islands like these, true culture, Christian culture, may spread across the earth. Many people are athirst for it.

In Mary this petition has been granted: she is, as it were, the open vessel of longing, in which life becomes prayer and prayer becomes life. Saint John wonderfully conveys this process by never mentioning Mary’s name in his Gospel. She no longer has any name except “the Mother of Jesus”.1 It is as if she had handed over her personal dimension, in order now to be solely at his disposal, and precisely thereby had become a person.

The Spirit of holiness and love is also the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge about love; and they are in fact one and the same Spirit: “Truth and love are inseparable wings – for truth cannot fly without love – and love cannot hover without truth.