Quotes about Compassion

We resist getting near the suffering of another partly out of our unwillingness to suffer ourselves.

If you believe that you are the beloved, you can offer forgiveness, even when it cannot be received.

When our love grows from God's love we no longer divide people into those who deserve it and those who don't. It is this love that allows us to see the enemy as someone loved with the same love with which we are loved.

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.

Jesus reaches out to the suffering world from the silent center where he stands in full attentiveness to his Father.

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

We wonder if we serve better than someone else. We import a drive to achieve into our works of mercy.

God is there. God's light is there. God's forgiveness is there. God's boundless love is there.

Dorotheus writes: "Don't look for the affection of your neighbor. He who looks for it is troubled when he does not get it. You yourself, however, have to give witness to the love for your neighbor and to offer him rest, and thus you will bring your neighbor to love.

The few times, however, that we do obey our severe masters and listen carefully to our restless hearts, we may start to sense that in the midst of our sadness there is joy, that in the midst of our fears there is peace, that in the midst of our greediness there is the possibility of compassion and that indeed in the midst of our irking loneliness we can find the beginnings of a quiet solitude.

A friend once wrote: "Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.