“Poverty as St. Francis understands it, does not lie solely in not having things, for human beings always have our body, our mind, our clothing, our being in the world. Essential poverty is a way of being by which man and woman let things be; they cease dominating them, bringing them into subordination, and making them the object of human will. We give up being over them, and rather place ourselves at their feet. Such an attitude requires a deep asceticism and a renunciation of the instinct to possess and satisfy desire. Essential poverty consists of the unique journey St. Francis lived physically where the poor are. There he simply tried to be, with the poor, free of everything. Meister Eckhart would call this Abgeschideneit, a word difficult to translate, because it points toward being in utter availability, total abnegation, being completely centered on the other rather than oneself, freedom, from and for.”
-Leonardo Boff
Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
[Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997 - page 215]
Archive for the 'Quotes' Category
“To the degree that our prayer has become the prayer of our heart we will love more and suffer more, we will see more light and more darkness, more grace and more sin, more of God and more of humanity. To the degree that we have descended into our own heart and reached out to God from there, solitude can speak to solitude, deep to deep and heart to heart. It is there where love and pain are found together.”
-Henri Nouwen
Reaching Out:
Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
[Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966 - pages 107-108]
“Simplicity clears away all the inessentials of existence and makes a life of genuine depth and meaning possible. When we remove the clutter from out lives, we become inwardly free to give ourselves to the mystical journey, to seek union and communion with the ultimate mystery. Simplicity of life allows us to become single-minded about the inner experience, and not waste our precious time and energy on useless efforts that only distract us.”
-Wayne Teasdale
The Mystic Heart
[Novato, California: New World Library, 1999 – page 151]
“Christianity is nothing if not an endless array of paradoxes: God entering his own creation as a helpless child lying in a cowshed being one of the greatest of them. For it was in that child that God planted his undivided power once and for all, giving his invitation to fallen humanity a human form and human face. May we all awaken to that invitation anew.”
-Gil Baile
“Do you want to know God? Then learn to understand the weaknesses and imperfections of other men. But how can you understand the weaknesses of others unless you understand your own? And how can you see the meaning of your own limitations until you have received mercy from God, by which you know yourself and him? It is not sufficient to forgive others: we must forgive them with humility and compassion. If we forgive them without humility, our forgiveness is a mockery: it presupposes that we are better than they.”
-Thomas Merton
No Man Is An Island
[page 214]
“A concern for where the poor are to sleep will make us realize that it is in fact not possible to separate love of God and love of neighbor; that is, that we must live both aspects as intertwined with each other. When we experience things at their root, we are helped in seeing the unity of our life is not created by a fine, balanced formulation of ideas, but by taking the path of practicing love of God and love of neighbor in one and the same act. This alone will lead us to life. The journey is a costly one but also full of hope, because on it we gradually become compassionate as the God in whom we believe is compassionate.”
-Gustavo Gutierrez
Gustavo Gutierrez: Essential Writings
“Christ was born not because there was joy in the world, but because there was suffering in it. He was born not to riches, but to poverty; not to satiety, but to hunger and thirst; not to security, but to danger, exile, homelessness, destitution, and crucifixion. His Incarnation now, in us, is in the suffering world as it is. It is not reserved for a utopia that will never be; it does not differ from his first coming in Bethlehem, his birth in squalor, in dire poverty, in a strange city. It is the same birth here and now. There is Incarnation always, everywhere.”
-Caryll Houselander
Wood of the Craddle, Wood of the Cross
“Advent is always a new beginning. It is actually a beginning and an ending. We are beginning a new life with Christ at the center, a life that is full with Christ. We are leading and ending an old life. This must be so. There must be movement…. We need to relinquish and empty ourselves, so that the newness Christ brings can enter and have a place to stay. We as Advent pilgrims on the way to the manger – to the great newness that a child brings – must allow ourselves to pass through the desert where John is preaching.”
- Paul H. Harkness
“Our Journey to the Craddle”
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present.” - Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton
“There comes a time when it is no longer important to prove one’s point, but simply to live, to surrender to God and to love.”
-Thomas Merton
The Road to Joy
Robert E. Daggy, editor
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989): 96.
