February 2000 (Vol. XIII, No. 2)

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.

Through contemplation you become a fountain that pours forth loving waters in all directions. Anyone who comes within the radius of that fountain -- old or young, rich or poor, man or woman, saint or sinner, friend or enemy -- gets splashed by love.

There came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. ~ I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence ~ that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all: That the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love.

The divine love of God teaches us that fruitfulness is more important than success, that love of God is more important than the praise of people, that community is more important than individualism, and compassion is more important than competition.

When silence, wonder, adoration are diminished, so are human beings. We imagine we can get by on love and indeed we can. But love shrivels up and dies in the absence of contemplation and adoration. Love, human love, needs to be transfigured, transcended, if it is to be true to its deepest self.

Compassion is an awareness that you become, rather than something that you do on occasion.

God hears only the beating of human hearts and what rests within them. It is the compassion that comes out of the experience of oneness and holds the world in infinitely tender love that speaks efficaciously to Divine Creation Love and alters the course of history. It is not some beautiful thought or insightful idea, but being with the groanings of the earth and all its peoples that makes our prayer. It is only our living out of the Center of unity and oneness that make a difference in the redeeming of the earth.

The entire universe, the cosmos, manifests the mystery of the fiery, ever-living Light of Love that shines forth in and through matter, in and through human beings in their specific historical setting. God, as the mystery of Love, is like the horizon that surrounds the human spirit, wooing it into creative tension between body and soul, mind and emotion, individual and community, heaven and earth. Willingness to live in the tension of these poles is the womb that nourishes and protects those discerning actions that will mirror the fiery, life-giving love that is God.