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Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, religion becomes a mystical matter, rather than a moral matter.

Richard Rohr

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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Life
Becomes
Grace
Moral
Rather
Half
Religion
Mystical
Moving
Second
Matter
Move

More quotes by Richard Rohr

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To the degree you have experienced intimacy with God, you won’t be afraid of death because you’re experiencing the first tastes and promises of heaven in this world.
Richard Rohr
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The Gospel gives human suffering deep, personal, and cosmic meaning, by connecting our pain to the pain of others and, finally, by connecting us to the very pain of God.
Richard Rohr
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When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms.
Richard Rohr
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One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.
Richard Rohr
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God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no . . . Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet.
Richard Rohr
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I'm not trying to make political statements ,but theological statements. How can religion get itself so identified with one political party, exclusionary world views, or with pelvic morality as the defining issues of the Gospel? Jesus surely didn't. Jesus said to preach the gospel to all nations, which means we do not just talk to ourselve
Richard Rohr
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There has to be a womp on the side of the head that defeats and undercuts this game of performance. It has to fall apart. Now unfortunately, that very often does not happen until what I call the second half of life, when there's been enough death in the family and you start experiencing your own physical deterioration.
Richard Rohr
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We grow up as natural optimists as Americans. Catholic priests were so hopeful as we watched the Vatican II experience. Yet, it's a punch in the belly to see what has happened in the church and the world. Dualistic thinking seems to have taken over the church and our politics to a really neurotic degree.
Richard Rohr
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The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. This is surely what Jesus means when he talks about the one who has being given more and those who have not losing what little they have.
Richard Rohr
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In solitude, at last, we’re able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence
Richard Rohr
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If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
Richard Rohr
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If you do not transform your wounds you will transmit them.
Richard Rohr
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Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another.
Richard Rohr
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God comes to us disguised as our life.
Richard Rohr
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It seems we are suffering from a very narrow and self serving reading of the Gospel right now.
Richard Rohr
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Someone has said, 'To be a saint is to have loved many things' —many things — the tree, the dog, the sky, the flowers, even the color of someone’s clothing. You see, when you love, you love, and love extends to everything all the time and everywhere.
Richard Rohr
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Our job as humans is to make admiration of others and adoration of God fully conscious and deliberate.
Richard Rohr
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In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.
Richard Rohr
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When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself.
Richard Rohr
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Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.
Richard Rohr