Quotes about Belonging

In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call.

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

When we dare to speak from the depth of our heart to the friends God gives us, we will gradually find new freedom within us and new courage to live our own sorrows and joys to the full. When we truly believe that we have nothing to hide from God, we need to have people around us who represent God for us and to whom we can reveal ourselves with complete trust.

That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions. There is a place for everyone — a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognise the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.

I am still like the prodigal: traveling, preparing speeches, anticipating how it will be when I finally reach my Father's house. But I am, indeed, on my way home. I have left the distant country and come to feel the nearness of love.

It had brought me into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of a busy life, something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home.

Here is a home for you; maybe you need us." All my desires to be useful, successful, and productive revolted.

Whether I am the younger son or the elder son, God's only desire is to bring me home.

It is important to think about the Church not as over there but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer.

Worrying causes us to be "all over the place," but seldom at home. One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. We know where we belong, but we keep being pulled away in many directions, as if we were still homeless. "All these other things" keep demanding our attention. They lead us so far from home that we eventually forget our true address, that is, the place where we can be addressed.

It is easier to live in the world without being of the world than to live in the church without being of the church

To live in the world without belonging to the world summarizes the essence of the spiritual life. The spiritual life keeps us aware that our true house is not the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides.