“True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who ‘have found the center of their lives in their own hearts’.” ― Kathleen Norris Dakota-A Spiritual Geography

The Spirit urges us…to ‘new life’. … [As] a community of persons called to live together with Christ… [we] must be faithful to its prophetic vocation for humankind.” Our faithful response to the Gospel and the world requires “that we be prophets who hear the word and see possibilities…, prepared to struggle that this Gospel message be heard.” Presentation of Constitutions
– by Sr. Justine Cyr, Superior General, 1991

For those whose life is centered in prayer, prayer is time for resting in God. It is the “work” of the soul in contact with the God of the heart. Prayer is what links the religious and the spiritual, the inner and the outer dimensions of life. Every spiritual tradition on earth forms a person in some kind of regular practice designed to focus the mind and the spirit. Regular prayer reminds us that life is punctuated by God, awash in God, encircled by God. – Joan Chittister, Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir

What we would like to do is change the world…by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.” ― Dorothy Day

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance. – Simone Weil

“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.” ― Julian of Norwich

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul-Saint Teresa of Avila

Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn’t. But it will be necessary to revise–to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things–in order to make it come out right.”
― Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk

Let us be renewed by God’s mercy … and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish – Pope Francis

Love is willing the good of another; joy is diffusive of itself; patience bears with the troublesome; kindness makes the other gentle; generosity benefits the neighbor; faithfulness is a dedication to a partner or friend; self-control restricts the havoc that the ego can cause. Which vocation ought to be mine? The one that awakens in me these attributes; the one that makes great my soul.
– Robert Barron, The Strangest Way