Do you want to know God? Then learn to understand the weaknesses and imperfections of [others]. But how can you understand the weaknesses of others unless you understand your own? And how can you see the meaning of your own limitations until you have received mercy from God, by which you know yourself and Him? It is not sufficient to forgive others: we must forgive them with humility and compassion. If we forgive them without humility, our forgiveness is a mockery: it presupposes that we are better than they...
We overcome the evil in the world by the charity and compassion of God, and in so doing we drive all evil out of our own hearts.
Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, Doubleday and Company, 1955, p. 163.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Receiving mercy...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
This is beautiful. The quotation We overcome the evil in the world by the charity and compassion of God, and in so doing we drive all evil out of our own hearts. really spoke to me.
I love how this mysterious, lifelong, ongoing, complicated, messy process gets reduced down to little manaeable five point plans by people who can't bear the mystery of it all :)
But this ... I can live with this type of directive. And I shall, every day, till I die :) Mr Merton, he just speaks the spirit so well, don't he?
Post a Comment