Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.
One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.
Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.
We do not exist for ourselves.
Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.
Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision – the only decision that matters.
One has to be alone, under the sky, Before everything falls into place and one finds his or her own place in the midst of it all. We have to have the humility to realize ourselves as part of nature.
A faith that is afraid of other people is not faith at all.
The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.
To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
My God, I pray better to you by breathing. I pray better to you by walking than by talking.
Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.