Quotes about Spiritual
Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious." The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The basis of spiritual community is truth, the basis of emotional community is desire. The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In the world God wills work, marriage, government, and church, and God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ. God has placed human beings under all these mandates, not only each individual under one or the other, but all people under all four. There can be no retreat, therefore, from a "worldly" into a "spiritual" "realm." The practice of the Christian life can be learned only under these four mandates of God.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christianity community.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men. Therefore
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The awareness of a spiritual tradition that reaches through the centuries gives one a certain feeling of security in the face of all transitory difficulties.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness...those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misuing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear...it is precisely such misuse of community that creates deadly isolation of human beings.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The existence of any Christian communal life essentially depends on whether or not it succeeds at the right time in promoting the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God's reality, between spiritual and emotional community.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There is no resistance to Satan other than flight. Every struggle against lust in one's own strength is doomed to failure. Fleeāthat can indeed only mean, Flee to that place where you find protection and help flee to the Crucified.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
the Liturgy is accomplished faith, lived faith. It plunges us into the full reality of the truth of faith; it creates the spiritual space in which the world of faith or, more correctly, the world disclosed by faith penetrates every pore of our being, in which we breathe the supernatural air; it brings us to the ultimate reality which, in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the sacraments, we even touch ontologically.
- Dietrich von Hildebrand