Raniero Cantalamessa

"There is a “diaspora,” a dispersion, even within ourselves. If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demoniac in the Gospel: “What is your name?” I too would have to reply: “My name is legion, for there are many of us” (Mk 5:9). There are as many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbor, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally distract us, drag us apart. Virginity is a powerful aid to progress toward interior unity, in virtue of the fact that it enables us to live united to the Lord, and able to devote ourselves to Him “without distractions.”"

"“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus said at the Last Supper (John 15:13). […] The word “friends” in the active sense indicates those who love you, but in the passive sense it indicates those whom you love. Jesus calls Judas “friend” (Matthew 26:50), not because Judas loved him, but because he loved Judas! There is no greater love than giving one's life for one's enemies while considering them friends; this is what Jesus meant by his statement. People can be—or act as though they are—enemies of God, but God will never be the enemy of any human being. That is the terrible advantage children have over their fathers and mothers."

"From the investigation into Jesus, one gets the impression that it sometimes turns into gossip about Jesus. However, there is an explanation for this phenomenon. There has always been a tendency to dress Christ in the clothes of one's own era or ideology. In the past, however questionable, these were serious and far-reaching causes: the idealistic, socialist, revolutionary Christ... Our age, obsessed with sex, cannot conceive of him as anything other than grappling with emotional problems. I believe that combining an avowedly alternative journalistic vision with a historical vision that is also radical and minimalist has led to an overall result that is unacceptable, not only for people of faith, but also for historians. Upon finishing the book, one asks oneself: how did Jesus, who brought absolutely nothing new to Judaism, who did not want to found any religion, who performed no miracles and did not rise from the dead except in the altered minds of his followers, how did he, I repeat, become "the man who changed the world"?"

"Maria is the only one who believed "in the contemporary situation", that is, while it was happening, before any confirmation or validation by events and history."

"If the purpose is not carried out, Jesus is conceived but not born."