Becoming Who You Are Quotes

“The beginning of sanctity is loving yourself as a creation of God. And that means all of yourself, even the parts that you wish weren’t there, the parts that you wish God hadn’t made, the parts that you lament. God loves us like a parent loves a child—often more for the parts of the child that are weaker or where the child struggles or falters. More often than not, those very weaknesses are the most important paths to holiness, because they remind you of your reliance on God. “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,” wrote Saint Paul, “so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:9–10).”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“God desires for us to be the persons we were created to be: to be simply and purely ourselves, and in this state to love God and to let ourselves be loved by God. It is a double journey, really: finding God means allowing ourselves to be found by God. And finding our true selves means allowing God to find and reveal our true selves to us.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“There are many Christians who serve God with great purity of soul and perfect self-sacrifice in the active life….They know how to find God by devoting themselves to Him in self-sacrificing labors in which they are able to remain in His presence all day long….They lead lives of great simplicity in which they do not need to rise above the ordinary levels of vocal and affective prayer. Without realizing it, their extremely simple prayer is, for them, so deep and interior that it brings them to the threshold of contemplation. Such Christians…may reach a higher degree of sanctity than other who have been apparently favored with a deeper inner life.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“Everyone’s true self is a unique creation of God’s, and the way to sanctity is to become the unique self that God wishes us to be.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“Merton wrote, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: the false self.” With his typical insight, Merton identifies the false self as the person that we wish to present to the world, and the person we want the whole world to revolve around: Thus”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“The beginning of sanctity is loving yourself as a creation of God. And that means all of yourself, even the parts that you wish weren’t there, the parts that you wish God hadn’t made, the parts that you lament. God loves us like a parent loves a child—often more for the parts of the child that are weaker or where the child struggles or falters. More often than not, those very weaknesses are the most important paths to holiness, because they remind you of your reliance on God.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“The multiplicity of desires leads to a multiplicity of paths to God.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“The Great Problem Solver, as it turned out, had been at work on a problem that I had only dimly comprehended.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“There I was, “striving to be something I would never want to be.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“To paraphrase Merton in his book The Sign of Jonas, all of my training pointed one way, and all of my ideals the other.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“His whole life was a quest for freedom—the freedom to be open to the wonderful reality that God has made, to God himself, to what is!”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“He questioned his monastic vocation as much as he embraced it. He desired solitude as much as he craved attention and affection from his brothers. He sought intimacy with others as much as he treasured his chastity. He battled with his religious superiors as much as he hoped to follow his vow of obedience. Most of all, he wished for fame and influence as much as he saw that humility was the foundation for a healthy monastic life.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“Merton said many times that when it comes to spirituality, experience is the place to start.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“specifically The Seven Storey Mountain and No Man Is An Island that led me to where I am today and helped me become the person I was meant to be.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“One day she accidentally ran over my rosary beads with the vacuum cleaner. When she pulled it out, it had lost three beads. When I came home from school I spied it on my bedpost and said, “Hey look what happened to my rosary beads!” Hoping to make me feel better, she said, “Well, look on the bright side. Now it won’t take you so long to pray it!”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“I used to imagine God as the Great Problem Solver, the one who would fix everything if I just prayed hard enough, used the right prayers, and prayed in precisely the right way. God was powerful, I thought, but also distant. And if the Great Problem Solver couldn’t fix things, which seemed to occur more frequently than I would have liked, I turned to Saint Jude. I figured that if it was beyond the capacity of God to do something, then surely it must be a hopeless cause, and it was time to call on Saint Jude.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“though I was by that point rather fond of Saint Jude, I was afraid of what my friends might say if they saw a strange plastic statue standing on my dresser. So Saint Jude was stuffed inside my sock drawer, and was brought out of the drawer only on special occasions.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“So, when I entered the Jesuits, at age twenty-seven, I did so with only an eleven-year-old’s knowledge about the faith.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“I got the idea that Merton was bright, funny, holy, and altogether unique. But there was something else about the show that drew me.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“The only problem was that I couldn’t see a way out.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“Here was a man, roughly my own age, who had struggled with the same things I did: pride, disappointment, confusion, doubt, sadness, loneliness.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“Whether we are rich or poor, young or old, man or woman, straight or gay: all of us are called to our own brand of personal holiness.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints