If you believe you are the beloved of God, you need to spend time listening to his voice - period! You can't say, "Yes God calls me the beloved, but I have to go out to do something now."

In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel.

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.

In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile.

I am working on three things: on being a prayerful person; on staying close to the handicapped; and on my writing. These are my constant concerns.

Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.

God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for.