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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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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
Centers
Tragedy
Attention
Rather
Become
Might
People

More quotes by Brennan Manning

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The love of Christ embraces all without exception. Fire of love, crazy over what You have made. Oh, divine Madman. (Prayer of Catherine Siena) Simply do the next thing in love. I have no sense of myself apart from you. Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem. (In loving me, you made me lovable.)
Brennan Manning
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The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.
Brennan Manning
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The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.
Brennan Manning
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The ragamuffin gospel reveals that Jesus forgives sins, including the sins of the flesh that He is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion but that He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit.
Brennan Manning
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The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.
Brennan Manning
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Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.
Brennan Manning
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We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt.
Brennan Manning
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Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.
Brennan Manning
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The trouble with our ideals is that if we live up to all of them, we become impossible to live with.
Brennan Manning
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Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.
Brennan Manning
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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.
Brennan Manning
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Everybody has a vocation to some form of life-work. However, behind that call (and deeper than any call), everybody has a vocation to be a person to be fully and deeply human in Christ Jesus.
Brennan Manning
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The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust — not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.
Brennan Manning
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Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
Brennan Manning
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The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.
Brennan Manning
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The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.
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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When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God's gift of grace.
Brennan Manning
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I knew there was only one place to go. I sank down into the center of my soul, grew still, and listened to the Rabbi's heartbeat.
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