Detachment, Grace, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), Page: Quotes, Quote Author, Quote Topic, Spiritual (life)
Although God is Almighty, He can only work in a heart when He finds readiness or makes it. He works differently in humans than in stones. For this we may take the following illustration: if we bake in one oven three loaves of barley-bread, of rye-bread, and of wheat, we shall find the same heat of the oven affects them differently; when one is well-baked, another will be still raw, and another yet more raw. That is not due to the heat, but to the variety of the materials. Similarly God works in all hearts not alike but in proportion as He finds them prepared and susceptible. If the heart is to be ready for the highest, it must he vacant of all other things. If I wish to write on a white tablet, whatever else is written on the tablet, however noble its purport, is a hindrance to me. If I am to write, I must wipe the tablet clean of everything, and the tablet is most suitable for my purpose when it is blank. Similarly, if God is to write on my heart, everything else must come out of it till it is really sanctified. Only so can God work His highest will, and so the sanctified heart has no outward object at all.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Abandonment (of self), Detachment, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
You know that there is no middle course, and that it is a question of being saved or lost for all eternity. It depends on us: either we may choose to love God eternally with the Saints in Heaven after we have done violence to self here below by mortifying and crucifying ourselves as they did, or else renounce their happiness by giving to nature all for which it craves.
–Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690)
Charity, Detachment, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
Cheerfulness consists in not regarding things as our own, but as entrusted to us by God for the benefit of our fellow servants. It consists in scattering them abroad generously with joy and magnanimity, not reluctantly or under compulsion.
–Saint Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)
Detachment, Page: Quotes, Quote Author, Quote Topic, Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer to people. Wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. That is the crux of the whole matter.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
Detachment, Discipleship, Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), Page: Quotes, Quote Author, Quote Topic
If you want to know what God requires of you, you must first of all put aside all affection and preference for one thing rather than another.
–Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
Detachment, Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Page: Quotes, Quote Author, Quote Topic
Little by little, let us leave behind us affections for the low things of earth and aspire to the happiness that has been prepared for us.
–Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
