Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God.
Jesus invites us to abide in his love. That means to dwell with all that I am in him. It is an invitation to a total belonging, to full intimacy, to an unlimited being-with. The light of the Spirit reveals to us that love conquers all fear.
I still believe that the university is a place where people can develop their minds and learn skills, but also they can develop their personalities and their spiritual life.
Writing is not just a job. It helps me to pray. It’s a way of being.
I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
I really believe that what we finally want is to know God, as God has come to be known through Jesus. Knowledge is knowledge of the heart – the Spirit – I would say. It is the Spirit in us who reveals God.
If you meet God in solitude, you discover the God you meet is the God who embraces all people.
Solitude, community, and ministry are certainly not just for celibates! Celibates also have a hard time keeping up.
Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey.
The people who most affected me were the ones who got right in there with me, who cried with me, but who also had a certain authority, who dared to say what needed saying.
I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries.
I am very grateful that I am in touch with so many different church groups. I am always very moved by the fact that so many people – practically over the spectrum of the Christian world – are responding to my writing.
Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, “This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal.”
It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines.
Obviously a child can never conceive solitude if his parents aren’t living it somewhere themselves. I don’t mean that to be alone you have to get down on your knees for an hour in a yoga posture.
Television is obviously an enormous intruder. Quite often people say they have no time, but in fact they waste a lot of time on things that are not healthy.
If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.
Community always calls us back to solitude, and solitude always calls us to community. Community and solitude, both, are essential elements of ministry and witnessing.
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 those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.