I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
BEDE GRIFFITHSThis was the very purpose of creation that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal ‘idea’ in God, should ‘become’ God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.
More Bede Griffiths Quotes
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Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
Now what exists within that small space, that is to be sought, that is to be understood.’ This is the great discovery of the Upanishads, this inner shrine, this guha, or cave of the heart, where the inner meaning of life, of all human existence, is to be found.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
To know all things in the Word is thus to know all the suffering of the world transfigured by the resurrection, somehow reconciled and atoned in eternal life.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
This is criterion by which the Church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine or ritual, but by the reality of the reality of the love which it manifests.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
In his (Christ’s) surrender on the cross all the pain and agony of mankind was concentrated at a single point, and passed through from death to immortality.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
It was God’s purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things on heaven and things on earth’.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
The body itself is undergoing great changes. My problem before was that I was living largely from the head; and then after the stroke I got down into the heart.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments – father, mother, wife, children – everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
Obedience is detachment from the self. This is the most radical detachment of all. But what is the self? The self is the principle of reason and responsibility in us. It is the root of freedom, it is what makes us men.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of. It was indeed the turning point of my life.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
The one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
This was the very purpose of creation that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal ‘idea’ in God, should ‘become’ God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
There is no pain of any creature from the beginning to the end of time which was not ‘known’ at this point and thus transmuted.
BEDE GRIFFITHS -
Stillness within one individual can affect society beyond measure.
BEDE GRIFFITHS