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The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.

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
Existence
Light
Women
Gazed
Men
Imperfect
Deeply
Filled
Truly
Darkness

More quotes by Brennan Manning

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Ragamuffins are simple, direct and honest. Their speech is unaffected. They are slow to claim, God told me... As they make their way through the world, they bear wordless, prophetic witness.
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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.
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The only kind of love that helps anyone grow is unconditional love.
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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.
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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 comes for sinners, for those outcast...and those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams.
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The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.
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This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.
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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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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If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.
Brennan Manning
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Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.
Brennan Manning
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We even refuse to be our true self with God- and then wonder why we lack intimacy with him.
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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No man can adequately reach and explain a single word of God with all his words
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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Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.
Brennan Manning
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In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.
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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I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware.
Brennan Manning