Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.

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.

That's the temptation of the devil: "Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!"

The crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him.

Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.

The gospel word of the day can become like a painting on the walls. of your inner room, the inner room that is your heart.