In every sick person, there is Christ who is suffering! In every poor person, there is Christ who is languishing! In every sick person who is poor, Christ is doubly there! 

– from: Padre Pio: A Personal Portrait 

Think about it. If we’re spending a lot of time taking, editing, and posting selfies, isn’t it pretty obvious who is the center of our universe? It’s not God. It’s not even family. It’s me, myself, and I. Given the size of the actual universe, the view from your cell phone or latest post might make you feel popular, attractive, and sexy, but it also leads nowhere, unless you consider Facebook or Instagram a worthwhile destination.

We are entangled and bound up together, not as in a net in which we are trapped, but in a network through which we are nourished and find our health. It is humility that teaches us the good of this entanglement while pride tries to escape our embeddedness, mostly by ignoring it and sometimes by violently wrestling free.

– from the book: Wendell Berry and the Given Life

The support of friends, especially in times of crisis, is vital to helping us through the emotions that flood and fuel our hearts. They will help us see clearly enough to move through mourning, provide lighter moments, too, especially if we might seem to teeter on the edge of truly losing hope. They will be the personification of God’s unconditional love and help us find even greater spiritual depth.

God did not abandon Thomas in his doubt, nor does he abandon us. Our God, after all, is full of compassion and patience. Doubt is a wound we all share. It is a wound that God longs to heal with his divine mercy.

– from the book Meeting God in the Upper Room: Three Moments to Change Your Life

In the beginning, God made a garden, rich with compost and humus, a black loam that smelled of dawn. Seeds began sprouting in this soil; trees’ roots wound deep within it as their branches reached toward the sun; grass, clover, and forbs of every kind spread over the earth in a green and golden carpet. God took some of this dirt, made muddy with dew, and formed a creature from it—a body of soil. Bending down, God breathed spirit, animus, into the earth so that it became an animal—a living thing.