Quotes from Brennan Manning

The nature of God's love for us is outrageous. Why doesn't this God of ours display some taste and discretion in dealing with us? Why doesn't He show more restraint? To be blunt about it, couldn't God arrange to have a little more dignity? Wow!

Finally, my old and now retired spiritual director, Larry Hein, who wrote this blessing—"May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit"— has come up with another one:

Impressions form images that become fixed ideas that give birth to prejudices. Anthony De Mello said, "If you are prejudiced, you will see that person from the eye of that prejudice. In other words, you will cease to see this person as a person. The Pharisee within spends most of his time reacting to labels, his own and others".

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own.

It is Christ offering the opportunity of a lifetime: "I have come into the world as light, to prevent anyone who believes in me from staying in the dark any more" (John 12:46).

Always and everywhere the overriding issue for the ragamuffin rabble is the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus says, "A tidal wave is approaching and you are lollygagging on the patio having a party." Or as Joachim Jeremias puts it, "You are feasting and dancing—on the volcano which may erupt at any moment."3

Instead of expanding our capacity for life, joy, and mystery, religion often contracts it. As systematic theology advances, the sense of wonder declines. The paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of life are codified, cabined, and confined within the pages of a leather-bound book. Instead of a love story the Bible is viewed as a detailed manual of directions.

Much of my callousness and invulnerability has come from my refusal to mourn the loss of a soft word and a tender embrace.) Blessed are those who weep and mourn.

I have given them the glory you gave to me, That may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may be so perfected in unity that the world will recognize that it was you who sent me and that you have loved them as you loved me. (JOHN 17:22—23 NJB)

All men and women are the people of His caring. All are called to accept the extravagant gift of His grace, for acceptance means simply to turn to God.

The crucified Christ is not merely a heroic example to the church: He is the power and wisdom of God, a living force in His present risenness, transforming our lives and enabling us to extend the hand of reconciliation to our enemies.