Small, seemingly innocent events keep telling us how easily we eternalize ourselves and our world. It takes only a hostile word to make us feel sad and lonely. It takes only a rejecting gesture to plu...
Percayalah bahwa pada suatu saat cinta akan menaklukkan dirimu sehingga bagian dirimu yang paling menakutkan sekalipun akan membiarkan cinta mengusir semua ketakutanmu
People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it.
One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive ask...
Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It i...
Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, an...
Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear the voice that says, You are my beloved. On you my f...
Just when all those around me were assuring me they loved me, cared for me, appreciated me, yes, even admired me, I experienced myself as a useless, unloved, and despicable person. Just when people we...
John Henry Newman views the visible world as a veil so that all that exists or happens visibly, conceals and yet suggests, and above all serves, a greater system of persons, facts and events beyond it...
It seems indeed that the Church today is one of the few institutions in the world willing to defend human rights regardless of who the oppressor is.
It is important to think about the Church not as over there but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer.
Indeed, living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation...
In Christ we live as God’s beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that. Jean
I wonder if the greatest temptation is self-rejection. Could it be that beneath all the lures to greed, lust, and success rests a great fear of never being enough or not being lovable?
I can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down. What is impossible for me is possible for God. With God, everything is possible.
I am less likely to deny my suffering when I learn how God uses it to mold me and draw me closer to him. I will be less likely to see my pains as interruptions to my plans and more able to see them as...
Holding the cup of life means looking critically at what we are living. This requires great courage, because when we start looking, we might be terrified by what we see. Questions may arise that we do...
Here is a home for you; maybe you need us. All my desires to be useful, successful, and productive revolted.
Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.
Frequently prison makes us think about freedom, hunger helps us to appreciate food, and war gives us words for peace. Not seldom are our visions of the future born out of the sufferings of the present...