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Interfaith Harmony Week February 1, 2019 Posted February 1, 2019 by admin@interfaith

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The Interfaith Peace Project is pleased to offer you a reflection for each day of Interfaith Harmony Week, February 1-7.

Christian Reflections:
Love and Compassion

JohanSwanepoel   stock adobe.com

“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness
of the interdependence of all these living beings,
which are all part of one another,
and all involved with one another.”
Thomas Merton
+++++
“Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living beings
humanity will not find peace.”Albert Sweitzer+++++

“Thought cannot avoid the ethical or reverence and love for All life. It will abandon the old confined systems of ethics and be forced to recognize the ethics that knows no bounds. But on the other hand, those who believe in love for all creation must realize clearly the difficulties involved in the problem of a boundless ethic and must be resolved not to veil from humankind the conflicts this ethic will involve us, but allow us the reality to experience them. To think out every implication the ethic of love for all of creation this is the difficult task which confronts our age.”

Albert Sweitzer

+++++
” Love is the free and imaginative outflowing of the Spirit over all unexplored paths. It links those who love in bonds that unite but do not destroy, causing them to discover in their mutual contact an exaltation capable of stirring their mutual contact an exaltation capable of stirring in the very core of their being all that they possess of “uniqueness” and creative power. Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fufill them for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our potential to love developing until it embraces the totality of the people of the Earth.”
“Love differentiates as it unites.”
Teilhard de Chardin

+++++

The Body of Compassion
I pray to be the face of compassion
that those who come within my view
find a cordial, kindly reception
written upon my facial landscape
I pray to the ears of compassion
that those who come filled with distress
will experience my attentive presence,
ready to listen without distraction.
I pray to the eyes of compassion
that those who lack society’s support
will receive my nonjudgmental gaze,
a look of unbiased, heartfelt welcome.
I pray to the shoulders of compassion
that those who come laden with burdens
will be able to set things down for a while
and that the load is lightened when they leave.
I pray to be the heart of compassion
that those who feel overwhelmed with suffering
will sense my empathic response,
one that forgoes a desire to fix the hurt,
I pray to be the mouth of compassion
that those whose voice is not heard
will be empowered and supported
by my determined, vocal stand for justice.
I pray to be the hands of compassion
that those whose life could benefit
from my presence and my actions
will be assisted by my humble offering.
I pray to the feet of compassion
that those who long for companionship
will see that I walk beside them,
joined in strength of our common humanity.
I pray that the Light of compassion
shining in my soul will recognize and
receive the Light shining in others,
that together we will care for creation
with respect and have gratitude for all that exists.
Taken from Prayers of Boundless Compassion
c2018 by Joyce Rupp.
Used by permission of Sorin Books.
All rights reserved
+++++
Christ Has No Body
Christ has no body now but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.Yours are the feet with which he walks
to do good.Yours are the hands through which he blesses
all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Teresa of Avila

+++++

Compassion asks us
to go where it hurts
to enter into the places of pain,
to share in brokenness,

fear, confusion, and anguish.

Compassion challenges us to
cry out with those in misery,
to mourn with those who are lonely,

to weep with those in tears.

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak,
vulnerable with the vulnerable

and powerless with the powerless.

Compassion means
full immersion in the condition

of being human.

Henri J.M. Nouwen
+++++
“The highest work of God is compassion. And this means that God sets the soul in the highest and purest place which it can occupy: in space, in the sea, in a fathomless ocean; and there God works compassion.
Therefore the prophet says: “Lord, have compassion on the peoplewho are in you.” (Hosea 14:4) What people are in God? John says: God is love and whoevere remains in love remains in God and God in her.” (1 john 4:16)
God’s (compassion) and peace prompts service among brothers and sisters. In that way one creature sustains another. One enriches the other and that is why all creatures are interdependent.”
Meister Eckhardt

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