110+ Richard Rohr Quotes On Jesus, Joy And Forgiveness

Priest Richard Rohr is a Franciscan friar, popular spiritual author, and international speaker. He is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, a center dedicated to transforming individuals and society through contemplation and compassionate action. His teachings focus on the integration of contemplative spirituality and social action, and he is the author of numerous books, including The Naked Now and The Divine Dance. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Richard Rohr on jesus, joy, forgiveness.

Top 10 Richard Rohr Quotes

1. The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it.
2. The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.
3. All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.
4. We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
5. The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.
6. Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.
7. There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough.
8. It is at the bottom where we find grace; for like water, grace seeks the lowest place and there it pools up.
9. The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.
10. The cross is the standing statement of what we do to one another and to ourselves. The resurrection is the standing statement of what God does to us in return.

Richard Rohr Short Quotes

• To give, and not demand that others receive . . . that is the crossover point to maturity. . .
• The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.
• I am who I am in the eyes of God- nothing more and nothing less.
• Every viewpoint is a view from a point.
• You surrender to love; you do not accomplish love by willpower.
• Those who are not true leaders will just affirm people at their own immature level.
• Moralism is always the cheap substitute for mysticism.
• There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.
• Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.
• It is only through the holes in our soul that we break out and God breaks through.

Richard Rohr Quotes About Jesus

Jesus liberated us from religion. Jesus taught simple religious practices over major theorizing.… The only thoughts Jesus told us to police were our own: our own negative thoughts, our own violent thoughts, our own hateful thoughts-not other people's thoughts. — Richard Rohr

The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. This is surely what Jesus means when he talks about the one who has being given more and those who have not losing what little they have. — Richard Rohr

Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God. — Richard Rohr

Advent is not about a sentimental waiting for the Baby Jesus. — Richard Rohr

To believe in Jesus, is to believe that the historic person who lived on this earth more than 2000 years ago was the image of the invisible God. That's a huge leap of faith, but it is my leap of faith, it's the act of faith of the Christian community. — Richard Rohr

"Christ" is bigger than the Earth planet. If tomorrow we discover life on another planet, the whole "Jesus" piece would not make sense anymore. If he did everything for just us on this planet he wouldn't be the savior of the "world." — Richard Rohr

As to his gospel, Jesus Christ came into the world as the image of the invisible God to communicate to us that not only did we not need to be afraid of God, but that God is more for us than we are ourselves or one another. God's love is infinite, and unstoppable, and will win! — Richard Rohr

The real spiritual journey is work. You can make a naïve assertion that you trust in Jesus, but until it is tested a good, oh, 200 times, I doubt very much that it's true. — Richard Rohr

One time, a Protestant minister said, "We made Jesus blonde haired and blue eyed and very cute. We made Jesus somehow a much more feminine figure." And there's probably truth to that. — Richard Rohr

It's important to note that Jesus and Christ are two different faith affirmations. Hardly any Christians have been taught that - they think "Christ" is Jesus's last name. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Forgiveness

every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us. — Richard Rohr

Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens. — Richard Rohr

God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Prayer

Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation. — Richard Rohr

Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise. — Richard Rohr

If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to. — Richard Rohr

In the last years, I've been reading the Eastern fathers, the older mystical writings, a rich, deep, and truly traditional Christianity which most Western Christians know almost nothing about. It is very mystical and prayer centered Christianity, with a strong social conscience. — Richard Rohr

Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us. — Richard Rohr

Mature prayer always breaks into gratitude. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Love

Once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking. You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop counting or calculating. — Richard Rohr

Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. — Richard Rohr

The two Virtues of Equanimity and Compassion become more available to the person whose ego-shell has been smashed-either by great suffering or by great love-or by both. — Richard Rohr

People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. — Richard Rohr

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future. — Richard Rohr

If unconditional love, loyalty, and obedience are the tickets to an eternal life, then my black Labrador, Venus, will surely be there long before me, along with all the dear animals in nature who care for their young at great cost to themselves and have suffered so much at the hands of humans. — Richard Rohr

When we can see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own. — Richard Rohr

Every time you choose to love, you have also just chosen to die. — Richard Rohr

We are just a little tiny flicker of a much larger flame that is Life itself, Consciousness itself, Being itself, Love itself, God’s very self. — Richard Rohr

Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Spiritual

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. — Richard Rohr

The phrase, 'You must die before you die,' is found in most of the world religions. If you don't learn how to die early, you spend the rest of your life avoiding failure. When you can free your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up. — Richard Rohr

Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people. — Richard Rohr

God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no . . . Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet. — Richard Rohr

One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action. — Richard Rohr

God comes to you disguised as your life. — Richard Rohr

Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God. — Richard Rohr

The spiritual world is hidden and perfectly revealed in the physical world. — Richard Rohr

It is in falling down that we learn almost everything that matters spiritually. — Richard Rohr

After 32 years as a priest , I think its fair to say that most institutional churches are very limited in addressing higher levels of spiritual consciousness. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Transformative

Heartbreaks, disappointments and even our own weaknesses can serve as stepping-stones to the second half of life transformation. Failings are the foundation for growth. Those who have fallen, failed or 'gone down' are the only ones who understand 'up.' — Richard Rohr

If you don't transform your suffering, you'll transmit it. — Richard Rohr

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. — Richard Rohr

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others. — Richard Rohr

If you do not transform your wounds you will transmit them. — Richard Rohr

Today we need whatever methods or help we can receive to allow the Christian message to take us to a deeper level of transformation. — Richard Rohr

Transformed people transform people. — Richard Rohr

If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it. — Richard Rohr

Pain that is not transformed is transmitted. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Responsibility

When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again. — Richard Rohr

You create your response to reality, and that response, for all practical purposes, is your reality. — Richard Rohr

We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Quotes About Happiness

The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. — Richard Rohr

What I wish I had said in the book [Falling Upward] is that part of the attraction of conservative religions, such as Mormonism, Mennonite, Amish, groups we would consider very traditional, is that they actually do the first half of life very well. They are often very happy people. — Richard Rohr

We find it hard to love imperfect things so we imagine God is just as small as we are. If we expect or need things to be perfect or to our liking ( including ourselves) we have created a certain path for a very unhappy life. — Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr Famous Quotes And Sayings

Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change--and clobber--other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible. — Richard Rohr

When you haven't found inner meaning, you will always substitute outer performance. It's the only way to fill that void, that sense of significance - that I am significant. So almost the degree of outer performance can, in many cases, mirror the lack of inner alignment. — Richard Rohr

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. — Richard Rohr

The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime. — Richard Rohr

When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves — Richard Rohr

We all become well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot. — Richard Rohr

Famine, poverty, abuse, you can't keep that all blocked out. If you let those things teach you, influence you, change you, those are the events that transition you without you even knowing it to become more compassionate. — Richard Rohr

There has to be a womp on the side of the head that defeats and undercuts this game of performance. It has to fall apart. Now unfortunately, that very often does not happen until what I call the second half of life, when there's been enough death in the family and you start experiencing your own physical deterioration. — Richard Rohr

Spirituality is about being ready. All the spiritual disciplines of your life - prayer, study, meditation or ritual, religious vows - are there so you can break through to the eternal. Spirituality is about awakening the eyes, the ears, the heart so you can see what's always happening right in front of you. — Richard Rohr

THE MALE JOURNEY t some point in time, a man needs to embark on a risky -journey. It's a necessary adventure that takes him into uncertainty, and it almost always involves some form of difficulty or failure. On this journey the man learns to trust God more than he trusts a sense of right and wrong or his own sense of self-worth. — Richard Rohr

The most common one-liner in the Bible is, "Do not be afraid." Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times. — Richard Rohr

When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. — Richard Rohr

Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God. — Richard Rohr

The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order. — Richard Rohr

Pope Francis insists that mercy is at the very top of the Christian hierarchy of great truths, and everything falls apart whenever mercy is displaced by anything else. — Richard Rohr

Life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward ... Life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order. — Richard Rohr

Remember finally, that the ashes that were on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die. — Richard Rohr

Christianity is seen by more and more people as a negative message: anti gay, anti immigrant, anti abortion (as the only life issue), anti gay marriage, anti the Democratic party. — Richard Rohr

Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody. — Richard Rohr

Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn't the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here. — Richard Rohr

The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend. — Richard Rohr

Our job as humans is to make admiration of others and adoration of God fully conscious and deliberate. — Richard Rohr

The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world. — Richard Rohr

A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I know.” A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general. — Richard Rohr

The school of relationships is where you learn self-knowledge. I just don't know how you could learn it sitting alone in the desert on a rock by yourself. You have to see where you fail at it. And that confrontation with your own ability - "I was again not able to love" - those are the teachable moments. — Richard Rohr

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us. — Richard Rohr

To the degree you have experienced intimacy with God, you won’t be afraid of death because you’re experiencing the first tastes and promises of heaven in this world. — Richard Rohr

What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship. — Richard Rohr

I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating. — Richard Rohr

There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments-and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. — Richard Rohr

Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you. — Richard Rohr

You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today. — Richard Rohr

It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody. — Richard Rohr

Many people who attack me know so little of that larger Tradition, and end up being not very traditional at all. When you invoke the whole and great Tradition, you end up scaring people who call 1950 America "traditional" Christianity. It is just what they are used to in their one limited lifetime. — Richard Rohr

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. — Richard Rohr

I'm not trying to make political statements ,but theological statements. How can religion get itself so identified with one political party, exclusionary world views, or with "pelvic morality" as the defining issues of the Gospel? Jesus surely didn't. Jesus said to "preach the gospel to all nations", which means we do not just talk to ourselves. — Richard Rohr

It seems we are suffering from a very narrow and self serving reading of the Gospel right now. — Richard Rohr

Religion was made to order to "save the world," to use a phrase Christians use so much, but we really haven't been doing a good job of it for centuries. It's heartbreaking really. — Richard Rohr

In my opinion, most organized religion does neither agentic service nor relational nurturance very well. — Richard Rohr

I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona. — Richard Rohr

I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore. — Richard Rohr

I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers this may sound almost pagan. But I don't think so. — Richard Rohr

A paradox is a seeming contradiction, always demanding a change on the side of the observer. If we look at almost all things honestly we see everything has a character of paradox to it. Everything, including ourselves. — Richard Rohr

You do need some successes as a young person. They don't inflate the ego necessarily, they just give you identity and ego structure. But, don't construct your life around creating those. Or you will become narcissistic and ego-centric. That won't get you anywhere. — Richard Rohr

I think most human beings are dualistic thinkers. It gets them through the day. It gives them a sense of superiority and security - that's what the ego wants. — Richard Rohr

Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels. — Richard Rohr

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy. — Richard Rohr

When you look at the dominance of Notre Dame, the love of Mary in almost every European country, psychologically, had to come from this recognition of the feminine mediating divine love. And for many people in history, it was clearly the preferred way because women raised most people, not men, so their first experience of unconditional love, of touch, of caring, of nurturing very often came from a woman - that got easily transferred to Mary. — Richard Rohr

In silence all our usual patterns assault us ... That is why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things to show up were the wild beasts. — Richard Rohr

When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms. — Richard Rohr

God, give me a good humiliation every day. It's good for the soul and it's good for the ego. — Richard Rohr

I think it's important to remember that by the second half of our lives, we are meant to see in wholes, and no longer just in parts. — Richard Rohr

To keep the middle coming back, you can't say some radically conservative or radically progressive things. That's been the bane of organized religion. It makes me wonder if Jesus' first definition of the church as "two or three gathered in my name" is not still the best way. — Richard Rohr

Life Lessons by Richard Rohr

1. Life is a journey of transformation, and it is important to stay open to the process of growth and change. Richard Rohr encourages us to embrace the unknown and to trust that life will bring us to a place of greater understanding and joy.
2. We must learn to accept our imperfections and be willing to forgive ourselves and others. Richard Rohr teaches us to practice self-compassion and to recognize that everyone is on their own unique journey.
3. We must strive to live with an attitude of gratitude, recognizing that life is a gift and that we should be thankful for all the blessings we receive. Richard Rohr encourages us to find joy in the present moment and to savor the beauty of life.