Roots of Christian Mysticism Quotes

“True prayer is not only of the mouth, it is of the heart, that is, of the whole being. It is a cry de profundis, out of the deep. There is a correspondence between the depths of the heart and the heights of heaven, understood not in a physical sense but in the sense of a 'beyond' in relation to the centre.”
― Olivier Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from Patristic Era with Commentary

“In a society governed by Roman law which accords an absolute and indisputable value to private property, they practise mutual assistance and, with a free originality, a certain sharing of possessions. In a society that takes eroticism for granted and where utterly heedless cruelty holds sway in regard to the embryo and the new born child, Christians bear their witness to the chastity of conjugal love and they oppose abortion and the desertion of infants.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Love is poverty, kenosis. Knowing one’s neighbour is inseparable from an attitude of non-possession.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“I have opened the gates that were bolted I have shattered the bars of iron and the iron has become red-hot; It has melted at my presence; and nothing more has been shut Because I am the gate for all beings. I went to free the prisoners; they belong to me And I abandon no one … I have sown my fruits in the hearts [of mortals] And I have changed them into myself … they are my members, and I am their head. Glory to thee, Lord Christ, our Head! Alleluia!”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“After death the soul crosses either a ‘sea of fire’ or spiritual ‘frontier’, where the powers of evil wrest from it what belongs to them and leave it stripped, ready to embark on a life of peace and silence (the ‘abodes’, one above another, of which St Ambrose speaks here suggest a progressive perfecting). Thus the ‘sleep’ of death appears as a contemplative state. Death, undoing the tangles of idolatry and sin, offers the soul that peace, quies, hesychia, which spiritual persons know already here below, a blissful visitation of Christ who is always present in hell. For since Holy Saturday and the Ascension he is the fulfilment of all things.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“The Word became man at the final hour; he became Jesus Christ. But before this visible coming in the flesh, he was already, without being man, mediator for humanity. Origen Commentary on John’s Gospel,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“For the early Church salvation is not at all reserved to the baptized. We repeat: those who receive baptism undertake to work for the salvation of all. The Word has never ceased and never will cease to be present to humanity in all cultures, all religions, and all irreligions. The incarnation and the resurrection are not exclusive but inclusive of the manifold forms of this presence. Christ is the first-born of God, his Logos, in whom all people share. That is what we have learned and what we bear witness to … All who have lived in accordance with the Logos are Christians, even if they have been reckoned atheists, as amongst the Greeks Socrates, Heraclitus and the like. Justin Apology, 1,46”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Humanity has nothing so much in common with God as the ability to do good”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Today, the approach of the Fathers would be to invite well-fed societies to a collective ascesis that would make possible a better distribution of the world’s resources, and prevent the gap between the rich and the poor of the planet from growing constantly wider.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“humanity reaches its highest fulfilment in a woman, Mary, ‘mother in all truth, of all those who live according to the Gospel’ (Evagrius, Pseudo-Nilus, Letter”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“if the ordination to the priesthood because of a whole liturgical symbolism (which is also psychological) is reserved to men, Christian antiquity was acquainted with charismatic Ammas, spiritual Mothers, who, equally with the Fathers, Abbas, practised the discernment of spirits and penetrating insight into souls.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Many women have distinguished themselves no less than men in the spiritual warfare, and some of them more … It was not only men but also women who followed Jesus, and he accepted help from women as much as from men. Basil of Caesarea Shorter Rules,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Woman is in the image of God equally with man. The sexes are of equal worth. Their virtues are equal, their struggles are equal … Would a man be able to compete with a woman who lives her life to the full? Gregory of Nyssa Let us make Man in our Image and Likeness, 2nd”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Sacred Scripture does not set men and women in opposition to one another in respect to sex. Sex does not constitute any difference in the sight of God. Origen Homilies on Joshua,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Woman has the same spiritual dignity as man. Both of them have the same God, the same Teacher, the same Church. They breathe, see, hear, know, hope and love in the same way. Beings who have the same life, grace and salvation are called … to the same manner of being. Clement of Alexandria Tutor,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“If Christians remain faithful to the message of the resurrection and become truly eucharistic people, they are in society like a forest in the middle of cultivated lands – an unlimited reserve of silence, peace and authentic life that makes possible all the good and lasting creations of history.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“In particular, if Christians must reject the death penalty, it is not from an idolatrous sacralization of biological life, but in order to leave a person the opportunity of repentance. Remember this, and you will no longer judge: Judas was an apostle, and the thief crucified at Christ’s right hand was a murderer. What a transformation in an instant! John Climacus The Ladder of Divine Ascent,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“How can we judge another person without imprisoning that person in his past acts? Without shackling him to one moment of his development?”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Beyond an ethic of law (certainly not within it as far as the Christian is concerned) we are called, as we gradually deepen our faith, to invent a paradoxical morality, that of creative love. This morality gives precedence to the person, the mystery of the person’s nature and destiny, over social ideas of right and justice.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Spiritual progress has no other test in the end, nor any better expression, than our ability to love. It has to be unselfish love founded on respect, a service, a disinterested affection that does not ask to be paid in return, a ‘sympathy’, indeed an ‘empathy’ that takes us out of ourselves enabling us to ‘feel with’ the other person and indeed to ‘feel in’ him or her. It gives us the ability to discover in the other person an inward nature as mysterious and deep as our own, but different and willed to be so by God.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“In the midst of the fire he stood, not like burning flesh, but like bread baking. Martyrdom of St Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“To be deified is to enable God to be born in oneself. Dionysius the Areopagite Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, II, Intro. (PG 3,392)”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“is better to keep silent and to be, rather than to speak but not to be. One who truly possesses Christ’s words can also hear his silence in order to be perfect … Nothing is hidden from the Lord but our very secrets are close to him. Let us do everything in him who dwells in us so that we may become his temples. Ignatius of Antioch Epistle to the Ephesians, 15,1-3 (SC 10, p. 84)”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“In union with God, the heart absorbs the Lord and the Lord the heart, and the two become one. Quotation attributed to St John Chrysostom by Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, 52 (Philokalia IV,252)”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“To progress in thinking about creatures is painful and wearisome. The contemplation of the Holy Trinity is ineffable peace and silence. Evagrius of Pontus Centuries,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“In the battle of ascesis and the offering of creatures to God in the cosmic liturgy, our will must cooperate with divine grace. But the ultimate knowledge, the love-knowledge of the Trinity, takes hold of us by grace alone. We prepare for it by a stripping away of our being until we become nothing but expectation.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“The ‘contemplation of nature’ can give spiritual flavour to our lives even if we lay no claim to be in any way ‘mystics’ in the rather particular sense that this word has acquired in the West. A little loving attention in the light of the Risen Christ is enough. The humblest objects then breathe out their secret. The person becomes the priest of the world at the altar of his heart, celebrating that ‘cosmic liturgy’ of which Maximus the Confessor speaks.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“what is a compassionate heart? He tells us: ‘It is a heart that burns for all creation, for the birds, for the beasts, for the devils, for every creature. When he thinks about them, when he looks at them, his eyes fill with tears.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“Deep within Shinto temples in Japan you find only a mirror. It is a symbol and a riddle. The risk there is of turning in upon the Self. But the Christian knows that the Self is the image of Christ. And Christ is the faithful mirror who reflects the truth not only of creatures and objects, but also of the Self that is no longer an undifferentiated abyss but the interior expression of a face.”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary

“We may gain some inkling of what God is if we attempt by means of every sensation to reach the reality of each creature, not giving up until we are alive to what transcends it … Clement of Alexandria Miscellanies,”
― Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary