To become truly human, we must become Christlike and we can only learn this by knowing Him and learning from Him.  In Romano Guardini’s meditative scriptural commentaries on the person of Jesus Christ, one can find as Guardini says terms “the realization that Christ forces upon us when He himself ‘interprets Scripture’ and our hearts start ‘burning within’.” (Preface)

Here follow some excerpts that I hope will lead you to read the enlightening portrait of Jesus Christ which Guardini paints for us:

“None of the great things in human life spring from the intellect; every one of them issue from the heart and its love.”  p. 18

“Questions can arise to trouble us, particularly as they are usually afflictions of the heart that have assumed intellectual form. ..there are profound questions that return after every supposed solution, mysteries whose intrinsic meaning, not solve but lived, increasingly clarify the faith of those who live them.”  p. 299

“Jesus looms like a rescuing cliff above the tides of human suffering.”  p. 49

“Jesus walks through the flood of pain, and the power of God flows form Him Iike a wave of human healing.”   p. 53

“…eternal revolt of the human heart against the bearer of its own salvation….The real reason is never given; invariably it is this mysterious, inexplicable impulse of the fallen human heart revolting against the holiness that is God.”  p. 53

“The Spirit within him has the power to heal – to heal from the root of the evil.”  p. 55

“Between God and man stands the barrier of sin….The Holy Spirit lowers that barrier of sin.”  p. 169

“The Lord warns us also to guard against ourselves, against the deeply rooted human traits of vanity, complacency and egotism…Not even before oneself should and act of charity be paraded or reveled it.  Send that inner, applauding spectator away, and let the act, observed only by God, stand on its own.”  p. 99

“What the Sermon on the Mount demands of us is…a beginning and a continuing, a rising again and plodding on after every fall.”  p. 107

“Christ the Intermediary is a sacred living artery thorough which divine purity and forgiveness flow; through the establishment of the Eucharist he becomes a permanent artery; supplying all generations with the supernatural abundance of divine life.”  p. 143

“Christ’s exhortations are founded neither on social nor ethical nor any other worldly motives.  We are told, simply, to forgive men as our Father in heaven forgives us.  He is the primary and real Pardoner and man is his child. Our powers of forgiveness are derived from His….love must become pardon when that neighbor trespasses against us, as we constantly trespass against God.”  p. 352

“Men have always known that something was wrong with human existence; that everywhere stupidity, injustice, deception and violence were at work. Consequently there was always the feeling that someday things must be set right and fulfilled.”  p. 393

“Jesus is exemplary because in Him Christian life begins.  He is its foundation.”  p. 423

Guardini, Romano THE LORD Regnery Gateway.

/www.amazon.com/Lord-Romano-Guardini/dp/0895267144/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307417186&sr=8-1