Quotes from Brennan Manning

As Blaise Pascal wrote, "God made man in his own image and man returned the compliment." Thus, if we feel hateful toward ourselves, we assume that God feels hateful toward us.

Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in this life.

Christ's anger is the storm-front of His love.

We are sons and daughters of the Most High and maturing in tenderness to the extent that we are for others--all others--to the extent that no human flesh is strange to us, to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love, to the extent that for us there are no "others.

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency. Richard Foster wrote, "Today the heart of God is an open wound of love.

given to me. Father, the only

Yet the spiritual life begins with the acceptance of our wounded self.

The Wounded Healer deduz que graça e cura são transmitidas por meio da vulnerabilidade de homens e mulheres que foram maltratados e desprezados pela vida. Apenas soldados feridos podem servir ao Amor.

healthy guilt is one that acknowledges the wrong done and feels remorse but then is free to embrace the forgiveness that has been offered. Healthy guilt focuses on the realization that all has been forgiven, the wrong has been redeemed.

What the father planted will be harvested, and nothing will get in the way. Not heresies, schisms, ecclesiastical blunders, defections, moral failures; not if the budget isn't balanced; not if I can't find a way to end this book; not persecutions or nuclear holocausts—nothing will obstruct the coming of the Kingdom.

While there is much we may have earned--our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night's sleep--all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift

The reply to the question Who is my neighbor? plunges us into the scandal of Jesus. The way of tenderness is not chronic niceness, sloppy sentimentality, or a soporific spirituality for the softheaded. The spiritual life isn't a theory. Living the spiritual life, treading the way of tenderness, calls for radical conversion, renunciation of a circumscribed moral code, and al life of humble service.

We hide what we know or feel ourselves to be (which we assume to be unacceptable and unlovable) behind some kind of appearance which we hope will be more pleasing. We hide behind pretty faces which we put on for the benefit of our public. And in time we may even come to forget that we are hiding, and think that our assumed pretty face is what we really look like.

Come, all you who are wiped out, confused, bewildered, lost, beat-up, scarred, scared, threatened, and depressed, and I'll enlighten your mind with wisdom and fill your heart with the tenderness that I have received from my Father." This is unconditional pardon. The sinner need only live confidently in the wisdom of tenderness.

Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself.

He was not poor that we might be rich. He was not mocked that we might be honored. He was not laughed at so that we could be lauded.

The gospel vision is precise on this point: we can't be worshiping some vague deity above the clouds; we can't be acknowledging Jesus Christ living within us and ignoring him in those around u. Two central facts of Christianity emerge - Christ is in you, and Christ is in me - and in the end, as Saint Augustine said, "there will be the one Christ loving himself.

If some things aren't said before a boy leaves home, it's probably too late.

grace abounded more because I could find it in the darkness as much as in the light.

Your friendship has been like the refreshing shade of a vast tree in the noonday heat.

Humility and fraternal love are spiritual bedfellows. When we befriend our own brokenness and minister to our wounds with tenderness and compassion, the "other" is no longer an intruder but a fellow sufferer.

When fierce mercy transforms our lives, the bewildering words of Julian of Norwich, "Sin will be no shame but honor," become luminously clear, as does the baffling observation of the spiritual genius Anthony deMello, "Repentance reaches fullness when you are brought to gratitude for your sins.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. As we glance up, we are astonished to find the eyes of Jesus open with wonder, deep with understanding, and gentle with compassion.

What I created today was a god, but it was not You. Forgive this sin of mine, I pray.