Words matter. These are the best Richard Rohr Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It is so important to balance orthodoxy with orthopraxy.
One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways.
Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.
This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything.
Transformed people transform people.
People inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control.
This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God’s Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God’s Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.
The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.
You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.
The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.
God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Without transformation, you can assume you’re at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.
I’ve had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
Jesus is the very concrete truth revealing and standing in for the universal truth.
Jesus is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an utterly alternative self image, world image, and God image, and thus reframing your entire reality. Mere inspiration can never do this.
I see little difference in the attitudes of those who consider themselves Christian and those who are openly secular and agnostic. Most Christian citizenship appears to be clearly right here – on this little bit of very unreal estate.
Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder.
Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.
If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.
We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.
It’s not correct to say Jesus is God. Now, don’t run and report me to the bishop, all right? It’s not correct to say that – Jesus is the union of the human and the divine. That’s different.
In my opinion, most organized religion does neither agentic service nor relational nurturance very well.
I decided years ago that if I’m going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.
Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.
If you depend on being emotionally inspired or newly motivated, you will need a new fix almost every day.
One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.
When ‘happiness’ eludes us – as, eventually, it always will – we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.
I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers this may sound almost pagan. But I don’t think so.
Most of the Catholics Christians I’ve met would for all practical purposes believe Jesus is God only, and we are human only. We missed the big point. The point is the integration, both in Jesus and ourselves.
