
Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, "This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal."

Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.

Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It's a great honor to invite children to read with adults.

Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply.

I trust in you, Lord, but keep helping me in my moments of distrust and doubt.

Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.

We must ask ourselves how many times others would benefit more from our silence than from our words.

Precisely where I feel my poverty is where I discover God's blessing.

God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved.

Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.

Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking.

I have found it very important ... to let go of my wishes and start hoping.

Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say to God: 'I love you, too.'

Once you are in communion with God, you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear other people in whom God has also found a dwelling place.

Active waiting means present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it.

This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.

It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries.

To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship.

A happy life is a life for others.

Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community.

To live in the present, we must deeply believe that what is most important is in the here and now.

We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.

The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?

O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones.
Let me find you again. Amen.

We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.

I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.

If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.

Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.

In a strange way the spiritual life isn't "useful" or "successful." But it is meant to be fruitful. And fruitfulness comes out of brokenness.

When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

The Church is the body of Christ fashioned by baptism & the Eucharist.

I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.

The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.

Writing is not just a job. It helps me to pray. It's a way of being.

Life is a gift, not to possess, but to share.

Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.

Life is not entertainment. Life is not distraction.

Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. Forgiveness indeed heals memories ...

From the moment we claim the truth of being the beloved, we are faced with the call to become who we are.

Your heart is greater than your wounds.

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.

There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.

Life is a gift to be grateful for and not a property to cling to.

Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.

When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.

Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry.

Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it.

This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without condition or limits.

It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends.

Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.

I always try to turn my personal struggles into something helpful for others.

I was forced to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life.

In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.

By giving words to these intimate experiences I can make my life available to others.

One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal.

God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.

To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.

Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.

The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.

Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey.

Gratitude flows from the recognition that who we are and what we have are gifts
to be received and shared.