Quotes about Understanding

The joy at the dramatic return of the younger son in no way means that the elder son was less loved, less appreciated, less favored. The father does not compare the two sons. He loves them both with a complete love and expresses that love according to their individual journeys.

what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.

To care for others requires an ever-increasing acceptance.

Jesus, of course, had this capacity to see truly. For example, Saint John tells us, Jesus did not want to entrust himself to them because he knew what was in every heart (John 2:24). Such intuitive and perceptive knowledge is the nature of discernment.

Real loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common. When

Thus the authority of compassion is the possibility for each of us to forgive our brothers and sisters, because forgiveness is only real for those who have discovered the weakness of their friends and the sin of their enemies in their own hearts, and are willing to call each human being their sister and brother.

When people can cease having to be for us everything, we can accept the fact they may still have a gift for us.

Our children are our most important guests, who enter into our home, ask for careful attention, stay for a while and then leave to follow their own way. Children are strangers whom we have to get to know.

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

Truth does not mean an idea, concept, or doctrine, but the true relationship.

We need you to be a father who can claim for himself the authority of true compassion.

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