There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.

A few years ago I met an old professor at the University of Notre Dame. Looking back on his long life of teaching, he said with a funny wrinkle in his eyes: I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered that my interruptions were my work.

[The Return of the Prodigal book] came out of my emotional and spiritual journey during the four months I was gone from Daybreak because of depression.

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.

The friend who cares makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters. In fact, it matters more than pain, illness, or even death.

I feel the problems I have are meant to purify me.

Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.