Quote

The confessing church of American Ragamuffins needs to join Magdalene and Peter in witnessing that Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace-laden mystery it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands.

Brennan Manning

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Brennan Manning
Age: 75 †
Born: 1937
Born: April 27
Died: 2013
Died: April 12
Author
Catholic Priest
Theologian
New York City
New York
Richard Francis Xavier Manning
Open
Keeping
Laden
Moral
Affair
Fists
Church
Rules
Primarily
American
Gift
Receiving
Hands
Christianity
Join
Magdalene
Needs
Mystery
Peter
Clenched
Love
Grace
Essentially
Confessing
Philosophy
Code
Witnessing

More quotes by Brennan Manning

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Choose a single, sacred word or phrase that captures something of the flavor of your intimate relationship with God. A word such as Jesus, Abba, Peace, God or a phrase such as Abba, I belong to you. . . . Without moving your lips, repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.
Brennan Manning
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The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith.
Brennan Manning
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Reality, truth, and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended
Brennan Manning
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* Recognize that God is with you. * Acknowledge God knows what He's doing. * Search for God's will: the path He desires you to take in life. * Consider what God did for you when He sent Jesus to die on the cross (forgiveness and righteousness)
Brennan Manning
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The most powerful thing that can happen in the place of prayer is that you yourself become the prayer. You leave the prayer room able as Jesus' hands and feet on earth. This is what it means to pray continually (without ceasing), to see with the eyes of Jesus and to hear with His ears with every waking moment.
Brennan Manning
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While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
Brennan Manning
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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 the Father, Son and Spirit.
Brennan Manning
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What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation, God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.
Brennan Manning
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Jesus reveals a God who does not demand but who gives who does not oppress but who raises up who does not wound but who heals who does not condemn but forgives.
Brennan Manning
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Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem. (In loving me, you made me lovable.)
Brennan Manning
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A ragamuffin knows he's only a beggar at the door of God's mercy.
Brennan Manning
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The secret of the mystery is: God is always greater. No matter how great we think Him to be, His love is always greater.
Brennan Manning
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Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.
Brennan Manning
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Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father.
Brennan Manning
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In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue in God, love is His identity.
Brennan Manning
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To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Brennan Manning
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Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith.
Brennan Manning
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To be alive is to be broken to be broken is to stand in need of grace.
Brennan Manning
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We are made for Christ, and nothing less will ever satisfy us.
Brennan Manning
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Faith will become vision, hope will become possession, but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever. In the end, it is the only thing you can hang onto.
Brennan Manning