Jean-Pierre Batut

“[T]he Father is that much more almighty over the world and its history because his power can go into effect within this world, which can take place only by enlisting created freedoms.”

Christ in his kenosis is not simply an example to follow; he is the Son, whose filial attitude is given through communion with those who believe in him.

"If it is united with Christ, the state of sickness becomes a sacramental grace of participating in his salvific weakness."

“In this perspective, human fatherhood and motherhood appear not as ends in themselves, but as mysteries of effacement before the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of the Church.”

“It is easy to see the at once untimely and salutary character of a thought like Origen’s for our age, tempted as it is to deny God any right to intervene in the destiny of the world. But who does not see that a God prohibited from dwelling in the world and history loses, by this very fact, any interest for us?”

“It is at the Transfiguration that he received this power [over death]. Jesus, if he had wanted to, would have been able to delight in the fullness of his glory from this moment on—but in that case, his joy would not have included our salvation.”

“The world holds together, wrested from the shadows and from the nothing, by the presence of the Church. With Israel, we have become the guardians of history and the shepherds of creation.”

“What in God’s own life is a death to self, which is one with the super-abundance of life, becomes a passage through death to Resurrection when God enters into contact with the sinful reality of earthly existence.”

"A harpagmos is an object unduly possessed, the fruit of a theft, a plunder. . . . From this perspective, every sin is, in essence, a sin against chastity."