The Core, Crux and Center of Christianity

The Bible. The Commands. Obedience. Faithfulness. Commitment. Loyalty. Fidelity. Yes, but is it the core, crux and center?

"Being a Christian means learning to love with God's love. But God's love is not a warm feeling in the pit of the stomach." Roberta C. Bondi.

"...the great intensity of the genuine religious life...engages and exhausts every single aspect of man... God claims our whole being for himself, not in the manner of a tyrant who wishes to exploit and annihilate us, but as a lover who deems us so precious that he will not tolerate the slightest capacity of our person going to waste. God delights in the utmost energizing of our being..." Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (Trappist monk). Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2012.

"Love your neighbor as yourself--this is the major principle of the Torah." Rabbi Akiva, second-century.

"What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law, the rest is commentary. Go and learn." Hillel (the great Jewish scholar a century before Christ).

"On three things stands the world--on the law, on the worship and on the works of love." Simon the Righteous.

A central point of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is that a renewed heart of love precedes all our actions.

"If we are sane ... we ought to fear sin more than sickness, sufferring, or death itself." Peter Kreeft.

The three most important words in the English language: "I love you." The second three most important words: "I don't know."

"The knowledge husband and wife have of each other includes a profound respect for the otherness of the other; based in love, each seeks to preserve the integrity of the other, allowing the other to be [who he or she is] without simply becoming an extension of the spouse. It is a knowledge that comes out of living together, responding to each other's daily interests and needs, being shaped by deep caring for the other. It is a transforming knowledge."

"It is in faithful self-giving (to others) that a person finds a fullness of certainty and security." John Paul II.

"The love in which we spend our lives in serving others will not give us the temporary happiness of romantic love stories, but, rather, the lasting, everyday, all-one's life-and-then-some happiness Jesus refers to as joy."