Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other.
Drinking the cup of life is fully appropriating and internalizing our own unique existence, with all its sorrows and joys. It is not easy to do this. For a long time we might not feel capable of accep...
Drinking our cup is not simply adapting ourselves to a bad situation and trying to use it as well as we can. Drinking our cup is a hopeful, courageous, and self-confident way of living. It is standing...
If I am able to look at the world with the eyes of God’s love and discover that God’s vision is not that of a stereotypical landowner or patriarch but rather that of an all-giving and forgiving father...
Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can r...
When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, 'Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.' But soon we disco...
We have very little control over what happens in our lives, but we have a lot of control over how we integrate and remember what happens.
To care for others requires an ever-increasing acceptance.
Then occupation is called a blessing and emptiness a curse. Many telephone conversations start with the words: I know you are busy, but … and we would confuse the speaker and even harm our reputation...
The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man.
Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.
It wasn't that the Gospel proved useful for my many worries but that the Gospel proved the uselessness of my worries and so refocused my whole attention.
It is quite understandable that you are afraid of this place. You have so little knowledge of it. You have caught glimpses of it, you have even been there at times, but for most of your life you have...
I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness.Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it...
Every time you do something that comes from your needs for acceptance, affirmation, or affection, and every time you do something that makes these needs grow, you know that you are not with God. These...
Being in the world without being of the world. These words summarize well the way Jesus speaks of the spiritual life. It is a life in which we are totally transformed by the Spirit of love. Yet it is...
Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom.
As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.
All human beings are alone. No other person will completely feel like we do, think like we do, act like we do. Each of us is unique, and our aloneness is the other side of our uniqueness. The question...
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with...