“We are set down, I say, in Christ’s righteousness, with which he himself is righteous, because we cling to that righteousness whereby he himself is acceptable to God, intercedes for us as our mediator, and gives himself wholly to us as our high priest and protector.”
Luther, Martin. “Fourteen Consolations for Those Who Labor and Are Heavy Laden” (1520) Luther’s Works Vol. 42. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969, p. 165.
“The insistence on an ‘infallible’ or ‘inerrant’ Bible has grown up within a complex cultural matrix (in particular, that of modern North American Protestantism) where the Bible has been seen as the bastion of orthodoxy against Roman Catholicism on the one hand and liberal modernism on the other. Unfortunately, the assumptions of both those worlds have conditioned the debate. It is no accident that this Protestant insistence on biblical infallibility arose at the same time as Rome was insisting on papal infallibility, or that the rationalism of the Enlightenment infected even those who were battling against it.”
Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 157.
"Since God is so ultimately unknowable–the divine light is so dazzling that it blinds us–perhaps it is reasonable to say that the word of God is so overpowering that we can experience it only as (and through) silence.
“As soon as I say that, however, another paradox emerges, for I am using words to testify to God’s ‘meta-wordness.’ This paradox has been part of the mystical tradition since the days of the biblical writers (if not before). We cannot put God into words. And, it appears, we cannot stop trying to do just that.”
McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 167.
“Since it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak, one simply cannot place the same burden on everyone. … When a strong man travels with a weak man, he must restrain himself so as not to walk at a speed proportionate to his strength lest he set a killing pace for his weak companion.”
Luther, Martin. “Whether One May Flee From a Deadly Plague” (1527) Luther’s Works Vol. 43. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969, page 120.
Comment: It is an act of discernment and wisdom to realize the need for variety in practice or requirements because different people have different levels of tolerance. There should, of course, be measures taken to promote growth and build spiritual strength, but when everyone is starting from a different place the means for growth and strength have to be different.
“The grace of Easter is a profound silence, an immense peace, and a pure taste in the soul. It is the taste of heaven, away from all disordered excitement. The Paschal vision does not consist in a rapture of the spirit; it is the silent discovery of God.” Thought 205.
Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 106.
“I’m also reminded of the lesson of St. Francis where he says that it is not the preachers who will be rewarded by God for converting the masses but the contemplative brothers in the far-off and isolated hermitages scattered throughout the mountains and hills. Often it is our sacred stillness that brings the greatest missionary activity.”
Talbot, John Michael. The Universal Monk: The Way of the New Monastics. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011, p. 72.
“‘Juniors’ on the first part of the journey invariably think that true elders are naive, simplistic, ‘out of it,’ or just superfluous. They cannot understand what they have not yet experienced. They are totally involved in their first task, and cannot see beyond it. Conversely, if a person has transcended and included the previous stages, he or she will always have a patient understanding of the juniors, and can be patient and helpful to them somewhat naturally (although not without trial and effort). That is precisely what makes such people elders! Higher stages always empathetically include the lower, or they are not higher stages!”
Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, p. 3.
“Although God lives in the souls of men who are unconscious of Him, how can I say that I have found Him and found myself in Him if I never know Him or think of Him, never take and interest in Him or seek Him or desire His presence in my soul? What good does it do to say a few formal prayers to him and then turn away and give all my mind and all my will to created things, desiring only ends that fall far short of Him?”
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 43.
“Most spiritual practices will eventually lose their freshness and become a source of boredom and tedium. But it is precisely there that our faith and determination are tried, and it is only through grace-filled faith and perseverance that we are able to reach the hidden treasures of these practices. It takes time–day after day and year after year–before these treasures come to light. We must stick to it.”
Talbot, John Michael. The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010, page 121.
“Curiosity is concerned with novelty: curious people want to know what they do not yet know, ideally, what no one yet knows. Studious people seek knowledge with the awareness that novelty is not what counts, and is indeed finally impossible because anything that can be known by any one of us is already known to God and has been given to us as unmerited gift. … But the deepest contrast between curiosity and studiousness has to do with the kind of world that the seeker for and professor of each inhabits. The curious inhabit a world of objects, which can be sequestered and possessed; the studious inhabit a world of gifts, given things, which can be known by participation, but which, because of their very natures can never be possessed.”
Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 22.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 