Homage to a Broken Man Quotes

“To make another human being feel like a fool is a terrible sin,” he once told Heiner. “It is soul murder.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold - A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“The first believers in Jerusalem distributed all their goods. ‘They were of one heart and one soul, and shared all things in common.’ As soon as the Spirit was poured over them, nobody could hold onto property any longer.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold - A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“What could Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” mean, if it didn’t mean making sure that one’s neighbor had the same access to education, healthcare, housing, and food?”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold - A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“That night I realized that Opa had always stayed inside me. His once-bright image had receded, as if across a widening chasm, and grown distant and blurred. But now I knew I must retrieve it for good.
As I pieced together his story, amassing what became an unexpectedly vast collection of source material, I began to get answers. Three times I tried writing his life, and three times I had to stop. At one point I felt so confronted by his presence that I could not bear reading what he had written any longer. It was a year before I could begin the project again. This story is still alive. It can get to you.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“He wasn’t famous. Yet just because he wasn’t famous, in the same way most of us will never be, we want to ask him a few questions. Embarrassingly basic questions, such as, “What am I here for?” “How can I relate to others?” “What matters in life?” “What about God?”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“Standing by Opa’s grave one evening, we start talking about him. Long past midnight we are still there, remembering stories. How he faced down the Nazis. How he was separated from his family and sent to work in a leper colony. How we wish we could talk to him.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“Just then, when everything seemed at its cheapest and falsest, I realized I had a choice to make. Either I could turn my back on any integrity I had left, or I could stop, turn around, and retrace my path until I got back to something I was sure of.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community

“Twelve years after Opa died, I sat in the hall of the Harvard Freshman Union listening as President Neil Rudenstine prepared us for the rest of our lives. “You’re the best there is, the crème de la crème,” he told the 1,600 new freshmen, and I believed him with all my heart. For the next three years I kept on believing. A tumor of the soul was gradually taking over everything I thought and did. This was not Rudenstine’s fault: he was only doing his job. But my arrival at college coincided with the start of a new, aggressive phase of the disease.”
― Peter Mommsen, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community