Thomas Merton Quotes

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

If nothing else, there's comfort in recognising that no matter how much we fail and sin, death will limit our suffering.

Still falls the rain - dark as the world of man, black as our loss - blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross.

From the time of Adam and Eve, man has tried to escape suffering in any form.

....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

So be it. God created profoundly fallible creatures on this earth, and human history is mostly the story of error and accident.

In the Christian faith, God really puts suffering front and center. He doesn't get squeamish about it.

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.

To appreciate heaven well, it's good for a person to have some fifteen minutes of hell.

Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war.

To those who do not love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation at last.

Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death.

Our greatest hope comes from the knowledge that the Savior broke the bands of death. His victory came through His excruciating pain, suffering, and agony. He atoned for our sins if we repent.

I am God's wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become the pure bread of Christ.

Death wasn't part of God's original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy - the last enemy to be destroyed.

Suffering is a corrective to point out a lesson which by other means we have failed to grasp, and never can it be eradicated until that lesson is learnt.

' Torn' is hopeful. It's a book that meets you in your pain and shows you how to move forward with life and in your walk with God.

The next time you are called to suffer, pay attention. It may be the closest you'll ever get to God.

The most common way Jesus comes into our lives is through a broken heart.

Though the cross of Christ has been beautified by the poet and the artist, the avid seeker after God is likely to find it the same savage implement of destruction it was in the days of old. The way of the cross is still the pain-wracked path to spiritual power and fruitfulness.

Love, the deadliest of all things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't. But that isn't it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both.

Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.

The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.

The greatest Christians in history seem to say that their sufferings ended up bringing them the closest to God - so this is the best thing that could happen, not the worst.

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.