*Prayer is the path to peace because it is the path to love, not to a “feel good” love but to compassionate love, the type of love that can reach out and feel for another and give itself to the other without asking for anything in return.

*The root of Christian love,” Merton wrote, “is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.” To live in the spirit of crucified Christ is to live in the trust of God’s fidelity, God’s “I love you, I am with you,” in the human heart.

*Only when we acknowledge our need for God can we begin to find God.