Within us and around us there is an invisible world; this is where each of us comes from... When you cross over from the invisible into this physical world, you bring with you a sense of belonging to the invisible that you can never lose or finally cancel... When you enter the world, you come to live on the threshold between the visible and the invisible... Because the invisible cannot be seen or glimpsed with the human eye, it belongs largely to the unknown. Still there are occasional moments when the invisible seems to become faintly perceptible... Now you belong fully neither to the visible nor to the invisible. This is precisely what kindles and rekindles all your longing and your hunger to belong. You are both artist and pilgrim of the threshold.
To be able to love one another, we must pray much, for prayer gives a clean heart and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor. If we now have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another.
Works of love are the way to peace. And where does this love begin? Right in our hearts. We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved.
I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence, so we need to listen. For, it is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us that matters. Prayer feeds the soul — as blood is to the body, prayer is to the soul — and it brings us closer to God.
We need silence to be able to touch souls. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. God is a friend of silence. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God will say through us.
