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Quotes About Grace

And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime, And as each blow was paid with Blood, You paid me also each great sin with greater graces. For even as I killed You, You made Yourself a greater thief than any in Your company, Stealing my sins into Your dying life, Robbing me even of my death.
~ Thomas Merton
Christianity is not stoicism. The Cross does not sanctify us by destroying human feeling. Detachment is not insensibility. Too many ascetics fail to become great saints precisely because their rules and ascetic practices have merely deadened their humanity instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace.
~ Thomas Merton
When sin becomes bitter, then Christ becomes sweet.
~ Thomas Merton
Those who imagine that they can discover special gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.
~ Thomas Merton
The mercy of God demands to be known and recognized and set apart from everything else and praised and adored in joy.
~ Thomas Merton
AN ELDER was asked by a certain soldier if God would forgive a sinner. And he said to him: Tell me, beloved, if your cloak is torn, will you throw it away? The soldier replied and said: No. I will mend it and put it back on. The elder said to him: If you take care of your cloak, will God not be merciful to His own image?
~ Thomas Merton
And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within, and from the habitual union of their souls with God in deep faith and charity.
~ Thomas Merton
It is good for the soul to be in solitude for a great part of the time. But if it should seek solitude for its own comfort and consolation, it will have to endure more darkness and more anguish and more trial. Pure prayer only takes possession of our hearts for good when we no longer desire any special light or grace or consolation for ourselves, and pray without any thought of our own satisfaction.
~ Thomas Merton
If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need.
~ Thomas Merton
The Mass is a memorial of Christ's sacrifice, not in the sense of an exterior commemoration, but as a living and supremely efficacious re-presentation of that sacrifice, pouring out into our hearts the redemptive power of the Cross and the grace of the resurrection, which enables us to live in God.
~ Thomas Merton
God does not give his joy to us for ourselves alone, and if we could possess him for ourselves alone we would not possess him at all. Any joy that does not overflow from our souls and help other men to rejoice in God does not come to us form God. (But do not think that you have to see how it overflows into the souls of others. In the economy of his grace, you may be sharing his gifts with someone you will never know until you get to heaven.)
~ Thomas Merton
The humble man also loves himself, and seeks to be loved and honored, not because love and honor are due to him but because they are not due to him. He seeks to be loved by the mercy of God.
~ Thomas Merton
What I need most of all is the grace to really accept God as He gives Himself to me in every situation. "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." Good Shepherd, You have a wild and crazy sheep in love with thorns and brambles. But please don't get tired of looking for me! I know You won't. For You have found me. All I have to do is stay found. April 11, 1948
~ Thomas Merton
It is a terrible thing to think of the grace that is wasted in this world
~ Thomas Merton
Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.
~ Thomas Merton
IT is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God Who chooses to awaken us.
~ Thomas Merton
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows, not by clarity and substance but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis.
~ Thomas Merton
The humble man begs for a share in what everybody else has received. He too desires to be filled to overflowing with the kindness and mercy of God.
~ Thomas Merton
The one thing that seems to me morally certain is that this was really a grace, and a great grace.
~ Thomas Merton
Gerçek anlamda derin düÅŸünme; psikolojik bir hile deÄŸil, teolojik bir lütuftur.
~ Thomas Merton
Grace, which is charity
~ Thomas Merton
To be an acorn is to have a taste for being an oak tree. Habitual grace brings with it all the Christian virtues in their seed.
~ Thomas Merton
The only answer to the problem is grace, grace, docility to grace. I was
~ Thomas Merton
Humility is the surest sign of strength.
~ Thomas Merton