Quotes About Compassion

Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion. But the father of the prodigal son is not concerned about himself. His long-suffering life has emptied him of his desires to keep in control of things. Can I give without wanting anything in return, love without putting any conditions on my love?

Radical servanthood challenges us, while attempting persistently to overcome poverty, hunger, illness, and any other form of human misery, to reveal the gentle presence of our compassionate God in the midst of our broken world.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing.

As the Father, I have to dare to carry the responsibility of a spiritually adult person and dare to trust that the real joy and real fulfillment can only come from welcoming home those who have been hurt and wounded on their life's journey, and loving them with a love that neither asks nor expects anything in return.

God does not love the younger son more than the elder. In the story the father goes out to the elder son just as he did to the younger, urges him to come in, and says, "My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours.

Compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry.

The joy at the dramatic return of the younger son in no way means that the elder son was less loved, less appreciated, less favored. The father does not compare the two sons. He loves them both with a complete love and expresses that love according to their individual journeys.

Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

The story of the prodigal son is the story of a God who goes searching for me and who doesn't rest until he has found me.

Rembrandt portrays the father as the man who has transcended the ways of his children. His own loneliness and anger may have been there, but they have been transformed by suffering and tears. His loneliness has become endless solitude, his anger boundless gratitude. This is who I have to become. I see it as clearly as I see the immense beauty of the father's emptiness and compassion. Can I let the younger and the elder son grow in me to the maturity of the compassionate father?

God's compassion is described by Jesus not simply to show me how willing God is to feel for me, or to forgive me my sins and offer me new life and happiness, but to invite me to become like God and to show the same compassion to others as he is showing to me.

I realized that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation.

A true disciple of Jesus will always go to where people are feeling weak, broken, sick, in pain, poor, lonely, forgotten, anxious, and lost.

To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer. It is more than a word of praise or appreciation; it is more than pointing out someone's talents or good deeds; it is more than putting someone in the light. To give a blessing is to affirm, to say 'yes' to a person's Belovedness.

To care for others requires an ever-increasing acceptance.

We all are children and parents, students and teachers, healers and in need of care.

They discover that there are people who heal each other's wounds, forgive each other's offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God's glory.

Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes, constantly impressed or enraptured by each other's beauty, talents, and gifts, but it does mean that together we look at the one who calls us to a life of service.

truly accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often much harder than giving it.

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation

If I could meet Rembrandt right where he had painted father and son, God and humanity, compassion and misery, in one circle of love, I would come to know as much as I ever would about death and life. I also sensed the hope that through Rembrandt's masterpiece I would one day be able to express what I most wanted to say about love.

Compassion must become the core and even the nature of authority. When the Christian leader is a man of God for the future generation, he can be so only insofar as he is able to make the compassion of God with man—which is visible in Jesus Christ—credible in his own world.

The situation which brought about your pain was simply the form in which you came in touch with the human condition of suffering.

Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion.