Sermon quotes on WOunds
Teresa of Avila
All the trials we endure cannot be compared to these interior battles.
Francis Bacon
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
Francis Bacon
Wounds cannot be cured without searching.
Quoted in Edward Arber, A Harmony of the Essays: Etc”, 1871, p.53.
George Carlin (For Contrast)
People can’t seem to get it through their heads that there is never any healing or closure. Ever. There is only a short pause before the next “horrifying” event. People forget there is such a thing as memory, and that when a wound “heals” it leaves a permanent scar that never goes away, but merely fades a little. What really ought to be said after one of these so-called tragedies is, “Let the scarring begin.”
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, Hyperion, 2004.
Alexandre Dumas
Does the open wound in another’s breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man’s side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.
Trans. David Coward, The Man in the Iron Mask, Oxford University Pres, 2008. p.131.
Shaun Hamill
Living with a family wounded by a loss you can’t remember is like sitting behind a tall person at a movie theater. The people around you are laughing, crying, reacting to something, but you have no idea what.
Ernest Hemingway
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
Stanley Kunitz
How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?
Groucho Marx
Time wounds all heels.
Henri Nouwen
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.
Henri Nouwen
In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.
Ovid
The wounded gladiator forswears all fighting, but soon forgetting his former wound resumes his arms.
Blaise Pascal
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
Pensées, (1657-58), 122.
Pope Francis
Like the Good Samaritan, may we not be ashamed of touching the wounds of those who suffer, but try to heal them with concrete acts of love.
Pope Francis
I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.
My Door Is Always Open: A Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change, A&C Black 2014, p.54.
Richard Plass and James Cofield
What often continues to shape our stories (interpretations) are the implicit emotional responses to our wounds. We must be willing to attend to our wounds and address the emotions embedded in our wounds. Because our story is held by God’s story, we can revisit the specifics of our wounds in light of what Jesus lived. Christ offers us a way of seeing that can transform the emotions embedded in our deepest wounds.
Taken from The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection by Richard Plass and James Cofield, Copyright (c) 2014, pp.105-106 by Richard Plass and James Cofield. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Publilius Syrus
Even when the wound is healed the scar remains.
Darius Lyman, “The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave”.
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