You see what I am driving at. The mentally handicapped do not have a consciousness of power. Because of this perhaps their capacity for love is more immediate, lively and developed than that of other...

Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief, in their own gifts.

Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community.

A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow...

Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.

But how to be present to another? Our hearts are so hard. We are so insensitive to the suffering of others. We must pray the Holy Spirit to change our hearts of stone into hearts...

Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with...

Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.

Deep in our hearts there is a call to live in communion with others, a call to love, to create, to risk. But there is also that radical feeling of our poverty when faced with...

A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers.

Community begins in mystery and ends in administration. Leaders move away from people and into paper.

I am convinced that in the present time, in spite of the difficulties man has to meet another in a state of oblation, communion and gift of self, there are latent hidden forces in him...

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.

Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.

Flowing from this union, source of a plenitude of joy, the love of the couple reveals itself through the daily acceptance of the limits and faults of each other and in mutual openness. It is...

When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don’t need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest. If our...

We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.

[…] We have to realize that this wound [of loneliness] is inherent in the human condition and that what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it. We cannot accept...

At the same time, however, the necessity for economic change in our countries has led us to conceive laws and accept traditions often at the expense of the individual person. Just when many are becoming...

A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its...

We can be seduced…by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to...

An ethics of desire is good news for those of us who have become allergic to an ethics of law.

People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.

…Individualistic material progress and the desire to gain prestige by coming out on top have taken over from the sense of fellowship, compassion and community. Now people live more or less on their own in...

[Happiness] comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment in our lives.

If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work — hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss — loss of the...

When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.

Look at your own povertywelcome itcherish itdon’t be afraidshare your deathbecause thus you will share your love and your life

One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility,...

We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.

At the heart of the celebration, there are the poor. If [they] are excluded, it is not longer a celebration. […] A celebration must always be a festival of the poor.

A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope,...

Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to...

We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the...

The word love has been so abused by publicity and advertisements that we no longer know really what it means.

Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don’t talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.

The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God’s design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak...