In Christ we live as God's beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that.

To be chosen as the Beloved of God is something radically different. Instead of excluding others, it includes others. Instead of rejecting others as less valuable, it accepts others in their own uniqueness. It is not a competitive, but a compassionate choice.

The great mystery is not the cures, but the infinite compassion which is their source.

detach ourselves from making our individual experience the criterion for our approach to others

The great temptation of our lives is to deny our role as chosen people and to allow ourselves to be trapped in the worries of our daily lives. Without the word that keeps lifting us up as God's chosen people, we remain, or become, small people, stuck in the complaints that emerge from our daily struggle to survive.

As Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion.

If you see in me more than my function or job, then I can slowly communicate to you on a deeper level. I can become a person to you.

Compassion- which means, literally, to suffer with- is the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same. Indeed the main spiritual question is not, What difference do you make? but What do you have in common? It is not excelling but serving that makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.

One who is kind is sympathetic and gentle with others. He is considerate of others' feelings and courteous in his behavior. He has a helpful nature. Kindness pardons others' weaknesses and faults. Kindness is extended to all - to the aged and the young, to animals, to those low of station as well as the high.