By Thomas Merton

The Gospel is handed down from generation to generation but it must reach each one of us brand new, or not at all. If it is merely “tradition” and not news, it has not been preached or not heard - it is not Gospel…. If there is no risk in revelation, if there is no fear in it, if there is no challenge in it, if it is not a word which creates whole new worlds, and new beings, if it does not call into existence a new creature, our new self, then religion is dead and God is dead.

Source: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander