Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.

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

If you are not able to be silent, you will not be able to speak well.

The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they're not complaining. They give young people a vision.

Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there.

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

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.