Michael Casey > Quotes

“Prayer cannot be measured on a scale of success or failure because it is God's work - and God always succeeds. When we believe we have failed at prayer, it is because we decided what shape our prayer should have and are now frustrated that there is nothing we can do to implement our ambition. Prayer is nothing more or less than the interior action of the Trinity at the level of being. This we cannot control; we can only reverently submit.”
― Michael Casey, Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer

“If we intend merely to coast along the low roads, maybe we can do it alone. If we are heading for the mountains, the support of others is indispensable.”
― Michael Casey O. C. S. O., Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of St. Benedict

“Prayer is not a matter of actively thinking about God. It does have a mental component – one of its tasks is to re-form and re-educate our thoughts – but it is not primarily a work of the mind. Efforts to conjure up words, concepts or images are not good beginnings. Its source is an act of love and desire that wells up from the heart. The contents of the mind during prayer spring from the will.”
― Michael Casey, Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer

“The monk aims, above all, for the kingdom of God. But his more immediate ambition is to rid his heart of complexity so that he seeks that goal in simplicity and without mixed motives.”
― Michael Casey, Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict

“The experience of many monks and nuns is that their awareness of the closeness of God occurs as often outside formal prayer as inside it: at work, in caring for others, in admiring the scenery, even in sleep. God will not be organized. If our expectations of prayer are built on the hypothesis of God’s predictability, our only certainty is that we will be disappointed.”
― Michael Casey, Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of St. Benedict

“The sowing of the seed produces fruit in proportion to the receptivity of the soil. Revelation is subtle. It does not bludgeon unbelievers into acceptance, but charms the heart of those willing to be wooed.”
― Michael Casey, Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina

“The crucial issue for people involved in the monastic enterprise is finality.”
― Michael Casey, Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict

“One of the great dangers faced by monastic practitioners is that, after a few months or a few years or a few decades, we become weary of investing so much effort in the spiritual pursuit with so little evidence of having made very much progress.”
― Michael Casey, Seventy-Four Tools for Good Living: Reflections on the Fourth Chapter of Benedict's Rule

“As he makes progress, invisible though it is to himself, he connects more completely with the most purifying power of them all, the inward action of the Holy Spirit. By this peculiar conjunction of divine grace and human struggle, transformation occurs.”
― Michael Casey, Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict

“This is not a human quality or skill but a gift of God that is both sign and guarantee that we are already living on a supernatural plane. Such love is a gift because it cannot be self-generated. It arises out of an encounter with God.”
― Michael Casey, Seventy-Four Tools for Good Living: Reflections on the Fourth Chapter of Benedict's Rule

“We live and mostly die with our imperfections intact.”
― Michael Casey, Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict