Quotes about Compassion

Dom Helder Camara, a twentieth-century bishop in Brazil, said, "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist.

Something mystical can happen in the course of acting together that transcends words and ideologies—people who do not agree on ideas can create common ground in the act of loving.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

After all, what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone?

Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, wrote, "Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out to the world; yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which God is to bless people now.

Lord, show us that reconciling with those we imagine are different from us is not only for peace, but also to train us more deeply in the faith that honors everything created by your hand. Help us see that reconciliation leads to deeper knowledge of you. Amen.

Sometimes folks ask this question about giving to beggars and panhandlers with suspicion, speculating that homeless folks will just use their money for drugs or alcohol, which happens sometimes. But we don't always ask what CEOs are doing with our money when we give it to their companies, and they may also be buying drugs or pornography (or yachts) with our money! In

When our theology gets in the way of loving our neighbors, it's time to rethink our theology.

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has your country lost its imagination?

My concern is, How do we deal with evil without becoming it? If we aren't careful, our "justice" can be as bad as the crime itself. Yet

But it was hard to stay cynical, as I met more and more beautiful people.