Thomas Merton Quotes About Grace

Quotes about: Grace

• Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.

  Thomas Merton

  Gratitude, Grace, Moments

• To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Gratitude, Grateful

• There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

  Thomas Merton

  Self Esteem, People, Shining

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.155, Image

• I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within.

  Thomas Merton

  Kindness, Real, Thinking

• To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Religious, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1975). “He is risen”, Tabor Pub

• The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.

  Thomas Merton

  Believe, Angel, Grace

• Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Oneness, Grace

  Thomas Merton (2003). “The New Man”, p.29, Bloomsbury Publishing

• The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

  Thomas Merton

  Simple, Reality, Silence

• The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Dream, Mean

• O God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your grace that comes to me in darkness and that works things I cannot see. Teach me to be happy that I can depend on You. To depend on You should be enough for an eternity of joy. To depend on You by itself ought to be infinitely greater than any joy which my own intellectual appetite could desire.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Joy, Grace

• When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.

  Thomas Merton

  Grace

• Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Heart, Journey

  Thomas Merton (1975). “The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton”, p.296, New Directions Publishing

• Thinking prevents the unconscious from speaking.

  Thomas Merton

  Thinking, Grace, Unconscious

• Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit a sin-nothing that will be able to drive you to it against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Long, Forever

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.462, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Light, Dwelling

• The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Grace

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.129, Macmillan

• This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Crucifixion Of Christ, Joy, Grace

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• What is 'grace'? It is God's own life, shared by us. God's life is love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are able to share in the infinitely selfless love of Him Who is such pure actuality that He needs nothing and therefore cannot conceivably exploit anything for selfish ends. Indeed, outside of Him there is nothing, and whatever exists exists by His free gift of its being, so that one of the notions that is absolutely contradictory to the perfection of God is selfishness.

  Thomas Merton

  Selfish, Free Gifts, Perfection

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The seven storey mountain”, Harcourt

• May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

  Thomas Merton

  Silence, Grace, May

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.179, Macmillan

• It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists of being yourself and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours, except in the communism of charity and grace. For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

  Thomas Merton

  Being Yourself, Mean, Who I Am

• Teach me to take all grace / And spring it into blades of act, / Grow spears and sheaves of charity, / While each new instant, (new eternity) / Flowering with clean and individual circumstance, / Speaks me the whisper of [God's] consecrating Spirit. / Then will obedience bring forth new Incarnations / Shining to God with the features of [the Lord's] Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Spring, Shining, Grace

• True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Clever, Grace

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Contemplative Prayer”, p.70, Image

• The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Grace

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