Quotes about Compassion

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. . . Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships.

Mother Teresa offers us that brilliant glimpse of hope that lies in little things: "We can do not great things, only small things with great love. It is not how much you do but how much love you put into doing it." Above our front door, we have hung a sign that says, "Today . . . small things with great love (or don't open the door).

And in a very special way, as Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, in the least of these, we find Jesus in disguise. Perhaps we are just as likely to encounter God over the dinner table or in the slums or in the streets as in a giant auditorium. Of course, suggesting that God doesn't need these million-dollar megacathedrals is the sort of thing that gets you in big trouble.

Church father Ignatius said that if our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry, then we are guilty of heresy.

So I am a radical in the truest sense of the word: an ordinary radical who wants to get at the root of what it means to love, and to get at the root of what has made such a mess of our world.

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.

Not many people get argued into thinking differently, but experiences and stories move us, especially when we have the humility to listen and view the world from a different lens, from someone else's eyes.

Nevertheless, because of what is "written on their hearts," we are called to look for God in people and in places where we didn't expect to see God.

On the wall of New Jerusalem is a sign that reads, "We cannot fully recover until we help the society that made us sick recover.

Today we can hear the whisper where we least expect it: in a baby refugee and in a homeless rabbi, in crack addicts and displaced children, in a groaning creation.

Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises.

Limiting violence was a good place to start. Abolishing it is a good place to end.