Quotes from Brennan Manning

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.

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.

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.

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.