Richard Rohr Quotes

Richard Rohr

Profession : American Franciscan Priest

Birth : March 20, 1943

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

Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.

Richard Rohr

If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.

Richard Rohr

Most women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games.

Richard Rohr

If God continues to give me health and a sane mind and verbal ability, I want to teach.

Richard Rohr

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

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

I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.

Richard Rohr

This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything.

Richard Rohr

We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.

Richard Rohr

Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another.

Richard Rohr

This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God's Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God's Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.

Richard Rohr

If you depend on being emotionally inspired or newly motivated, you will need a new fix almost every day.

Richard Rohr

Transformed people transform people.

Richard Rohr

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

Richard Rohr

People inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control.

Richard Rohr

One would think that people who insist on being monotheistic would be the first in line to walk across the artificial boundaries created by nation states, class systems, cultures and even religions. But often they are the last!

Richard Rohr

The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.

Richard Rohr

Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we, know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written.

Richard Rohr

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

Richard Rohr