Sometimes we get these gems from the work in the Roman Catholic Church, which acutely captures and articulates an approximation of Orthodox Lex Orandi. In the milleu of charismatic mega-Church worldviews, such work from the See of Rome is a sober reminder for us Orthodox to avoid packaging and reducing our theology (our lex Credendi) and also a reminder of our Orthodoxy missiology which is kenotic, restorative and about theosis...nothing less than union with God, of participating in the Divine Life, and of becoming holy as He is Holy. On behalf of all and for all...
+ Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, http://www.amazon.com/Community-Growth-Jean-Vanier/dp/0809131358
"To be a witness does not mean engaging in propaganda or in stiring people up rather it means be a living mystery; living life in such a way that one's life would have not sense if God did not exist. To be a witness is much less a matter of external changes in one’s way of living than of firm determination to establish a real community of destiny with the disinherited masses."
+ Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, Mission de France
"Mission is revealing to others their fundamental beauty, value and importance in the universe, their capacity to love, to grow and to do beautiful things and to meet God. Mission is transmitting to people a new inner freedom and hope; it is unlocking the doors of their being so that new energies can flow; it is taking away from their shoulders the terrible yoke of fear and guilt. To give life to people is to reveal to them that they are loved just as they are by God, with the mixture of good and evil, light and darkness that is in them: that the stone in front of their tomb in which all the dirt of their lives has been hidden, can be rolled away. They are forgiven; they can live in freedom."
+ Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, http://www.amazon.com/Community-Growth-Jean-Vanier/dp/0809131358
