Everyone shares the handicap of mortality. Our individual physical, emotional, and spiritual failures are but symptoms of this disease.
Every Christian is constantly invited to overcome his neighbor’s fear by entering into it with him, and to find in the fellowship of suffering the way to freedom.
Birthdays need to be celebrated. i think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam or promotion or a victory. because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone thank yo...
Worrying causes us to be all over the place, but seldom at home. One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. We know where...
With a friend we don’t have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.
Why do we children of the light so easily become conspirators with the darkness? The answer is quite simple. Our identity, our sense of self, is at stake.
When you can look into the face of another human being and you have enough light in you to recognize your brother or you sister. Until then it is night, and darkness is still with us.
When we think about the people who have given us hope and have increased the strength of our soul, we might discover that they were not the advice givers, warners or moralists, but the few who were ab...
When we live with hope we do not get tangled up with concerns for how our wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, our prayers are not directed toward the gift, but toward the one who gives it. Our prayers...
When we dare to speak from the depth of our heart to the friends God gives us, we will gradually find new freedom within us and new courage to live our own sorrows and joys to the full. When we truly...
When we are alone with God, the Spirit prays in us. The challenge is to develop a simple discipline or spiritual practice to embrace some empty time and empty space every day.
When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself All is lost. I have to start all over again. This is not...
When I fail, I feel jealous or resentful of these others. When I succeed, I worry that others will be jealous or resentful of me. I become suspicious or defensive and increasingly afraid that I won’t...
We will never believe that we have anything to give unless there is someone who is able to receive.
We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. The philosopher Spinoza called this a horror vacui. We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill...
We often say, I am not very happy. I am not content with the way my life is going. I am not really joyful or peaceful, but I just don’t know how things can be different, and I guess I have to be reali...
We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no televi...
We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with Him and Him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; onl...
Unfulfilled BENEATH OUR WORRYING lives, however, something else is going on. While our minds and hearts are filled with many things, and we wonder how we can live up to the expectations imposed upon u...
Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently from the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other m...