Quotes about Reflection

We tend to be compassionate to the extent that we have suffered the Passion in our own lives.

This pattern of discerning God's hidden presence involves at least four spiritual practices: 1) interpreting scripture, or theological reflection 2) staying, sometimes called abiding or remaining in prayer 3) breaking bread, or recognizing the presence of Christ in the Eucharist 4) remembering Jesus, or the 'burning heart' experience. These components form a biblically grounded and traditionally understood practice of discerning the divine presence in daily life.

In solitude we can come to the realization that we are not driven together but brought together. In solitude we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers and sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God's all-embracing love. In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call. In solitude we indeed realize that community is not made but given.

You could ask yourself, 'How did God Bless me today?' If you do that long enough and with faith, you will find yourself remembering blessings. And sometimes you will have gifts brought to your mind which you failed to notice during the day, but which you will then know were a touch of God's hand in your life.

My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God's kindness. It will build our testimonies. You may not keep a journal. You may not share whatever record you keep with those you love and serve. But you and they will be blessed as you remember what the Lord has done.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.