pat loughery

This morning’s selection from Celtic Daily Prayer includes this quote:

“It is your business and others’ to go forth, confronting them face to face, for that is the only way of bringing them to Me. For when you are face to face with them, you love them, and once you love them, then I can speak through you.”

From Molchanie
by Catherine de Heuck Doherty

Is it a truism that compassion can only fully overwhem us when we are face-to-face with others? Seems like it to me. It’s far easier for me to scoff, reject and ridicule when I am distant. But when the object of that scorn is in front of my face and we are breathing the same air – I see their humanity and our shared brokenness.

++Lord, show me your face in those I meet. Especially those I don’t like.++