“Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.”

We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.

Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.

We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.

One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are.

The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds but how can we put our woundedness in service to others.

The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.

Forgiveness changes the way we remember.

Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

I trust in you, Lord, but keep helping me in my moments of distrust and doubt.

Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.

My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.

Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know I am moving from fear to love.

God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.

Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.

Fear wears so many clever disguises it is virtually impossible to always recognize it. Fear disguises itself as the need to be somewhere else, doing something else, not knowing how to do something or not needing to do something.

One cannot live in society and be free from society.

To achieve the possible, we must attempt the impossible again and again.

It is certain because it is impossible.

You take five fingers. Individually, I can pin any one of them, but if I pin them together (makes a fist), it’s damn near impossible to turn this around.

May God remind us daily-no matter what kind of obstacles we face-that we are loved and empowered by the One who brought the universe into existence with the mere sound of His voice. Nothing is impossible for Him.

[On alcohol:] Total abstinence is an impossibility and it will not do to insist on it as a general practice.

And what is impossible to science?