God is there. God’s light is there. God’s forgiveness is there. God’s boundless love is there.
For a Christian is only a Christian when he unceasingly asks critical questions of the society in which he lives and continuously stresses the necessity for conversion, not only of the individual but...
As long as religious people are well dressed, well fed, and well cared for, words about being in solidarity with the poor will remain pious words more likely to evoke good feelings than creative actio...
Advent . . . leads to a growing inner stillness and joy allowing me to realize that the One for whom I am waiting has already arrived and speaks to me in the silence of my heart.
A large part of the father’s life had been spent waiting. He could not force his younger son to come home or his older son to let go of his resentments. Only they themselves could take the initiative...
A friend once wrote: Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose...
Crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him. Real prayer comes from the heart.
A much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence.
Your whole life is filled with losses, endless losses. And every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression, and...
Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude. These too are times for your community.
Your pain is deep, and it won’t just go away. It is also uniquely yours, because it is linked to some of your earliest life experiences.Your call is to bring that pain home. As long as your wounded pa...
Yet why all this resistance? Why this powerful attraction to the darkness? Jesus says, Everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever d...
Yes, there is that voice, the voice that speaks from above and from within and that whispers softly or declares loudly: You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. It certainly is not easy to hear that...
Worrying causes us to be all over the place, but seldom at home.
Without trust, I cannot let myself be found. Trust is that deep inner conviction that the Father wants me home. As long as I doubt that I am worth finding and put myself down as less loved than my you...
While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beaut...
When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give.
When you let your wounded self express itself in the form of apologies, arguments, or complaints—through which it cannot be truly heard—you will only grow frustrated and increasingly feel rejected.