“True spirituality is not a search for perfection or control or the door to the next world; it is a search for divine union now. The great discovery is always that what we are searching for has already been given! I did not find it; it found me.”
Rohr, Richard. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2009, p. 16
“We become mystics or contemplatives only through the grace of God as work in our lives. Any effort we make to do it strictly on our own is likely doomed to failure. Indeed, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing has stern words for those who, through pride and the folly of their own imagination, try to become mystics or contemplatives without humbly relying on the guidance of the Spirit. He calls these pseudo-mystics the ‘devil’s contemplatives’. Contemplation and mysticism are always gifts from God. But God will never force those gifts on anyone God is not in the business of spiritual coercion.”
McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 176.
“We Christians affirm the communion of saints in the Nicene Creed, but I think there should be an equal belief in the ‘communion of sinners.’ We are all fully a part of both groups.”
Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: the Search for Our True Self. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013, p. xix.
The Lutherans call this idea the “simul justus et peccator” (which, being interpreted, means ‘at the same time, saint and sinner’). In other words, while in this life, we are in a constant cycle of sin and forgiveness, one that moves such that we are always in both states simultaneously.
“The delicate action of grace in the soul is profoundly disturbed by all human violence.”
Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1958. (pbk ed 1999) (p. 114).
Grace is God’s work and presence everywhere, even amidst violence. But our sinful violence (and I would say that violence is always evidence of sin) makes it harder to notice the presence of God’s grace.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 