Jesus' parable, therefore, shatters the stereotypes of social boundaries and class division and renders void any system of religious quid pro quo. Neighbors do not recognize social class. Neither is mercy the conduct of a calculating heart, nor eternal life the reward...
When we begin to realize that God loves us with our weakness, with our vulnerability, with our failures, we can begin to accept them as an inevitable part of our human life. We can love others--with their failures--when we stop despising ourselves--because of our...
In true love it is not we who love the afflicted in God; it is God in us who loves them. When we are in affliction, it is God in us who loves those who wish us well. Compassion and gratitude come down from God, and when they are exchanged in a glance, God is present...
In returning to ourselves, in contemplating the compassion of Jesus and realizing that "This means me," we come under the Mercy and qualify for the nametag "blessed." In urging us to compassionate caring for others, Jesus invites us to have compassion for ourselves....
For Jesus, compassion was more than a quality of God and an individual virtue [though it was indeed that]: it was a social paradigm, the core value for life in the community. To put it boldly: Jesus was political. He directly and repeatedly challenged the dominant...
Why are people indifferent? Don't people understand that indifference is probably the worst plague that exists in life? It is worse than despair. Despair is a beginning. Despair can inspire you to create great works of art, music, literature, philosophy, theology....
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 looks out on the world,yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing goodand yours are the hands with which He is to bless us...
In his daily practice, Jesus rebelled calmly against the deepest rules of his world. He lived his own parable of the Banquet and the injunctions of the master in it: “Go therefore to the thoroughfare and invite to the marriage feast as many as you can find.” In the...
Perhaps we are more attentive when life is hard. When we are open and vulnerable, the Spirit can more easily lead us forth to fuller expressions of wisdom, compassion, and love—to the heart of our humanity, the imago dei, the image of God.
Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of...