“In big ways and small, I knew exactly how selfish a war could make me, and I saw all around me how fear and need drove other people to terrible betrayals. Yet over and over, I also saw how war crea...”

“To figure out what was really happening behind the clichs, I'd learned, meant a practice of looking not at the center but at the edges of thingsat the unlikeliest and weakest people, not the most a...”

“I'd gone to Central America because I didn't think politics was simply a matter of opinion. It wasn't about having the right "line," having an ideologically pure analysis. It had to be incarnate. A...”

“The entire contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it div...”

“What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: You can't be a Christian by yourself.”

“While the classic conversion story involves desperation, hitting bottom, and a plea for help, I think now that it was gratitude, as well as the suffering I'd seen, that made room for me to open my ...”

“The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”

“...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.”

“Joy is thankfulness, and when we are joyful, that is the best expression of thanks we can offer the Lord, Who delivers us from sorrow and sin.”

“The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness,...”

“Hungry men are not known for their patience or their kindness.”

“Hunger does not come from body; it comes from mind. Once a person starts to feel hungry all the time, nothing satisfies him whatsoever. This hunger covers up all the aspects of life ... The only th...”

“You can't get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.”

“True spirituality is "the place where desperation meets Jesus.”

“In Jesus the full meaning of peace is revealed: he gave peace, made peace and is our peace (Jn. 14:27; Eph. 2:14f.).”