No one in the service of the poor, who is honest, pats himself or herself on the back. If he or she does, it is not for long. I realize that God brought me into this world, blessed with skills and talents. The only thing that makes sense to me is to use them in the service of the poor. It is at their feet that I find myself.

Mara and I visited him today. He talked at length about belief and faith and God. “My resistance to God,” he said, “has always been rooted in my feelings of being dirty. Like I am always a leper. But I know that we are all lepers to some degree and that in spite of that God still loves us. In fact, Jesus spent a lot of time with lepers, didn’t he,

It is quite another thing to challenge a system in which people are hungry, in which some can be so rich and many are poor.

My dearest Father Gary, I cannot adequately put into words what your friendship has meant to me over the past few years. You have been my steady rock in the raging storm. You’ve been the father to me that I always wished for when I was growing up. You’ve given so much, and I know you’ve got so much more to give. Your ministry has just begun. When

Because of this love of my dearest friend, I have learned to love myself and to find the freedom to listen to God’s invitation to me to follow God as a Jesuit priest.

Robert has gone to Our House, an AIDS hospice. He seems very happy there and continues to manifest a steady change of attitude. At this very moment, I am looking at an advance directive, a document that states that Robert has chosen me to make medical decisions for him when he is unable to make them for himself. This is a humbling experience, and I

They are, first of all, God’s creatures, and therefore they deserve the love and awe intrinsic to all creatures. And second of all, they deserve the best kind of spiritual and psychological assistance available.

The spirit of God will use me as an agent of reconciliation, no matter how resistant or unprepared or prejudiced I may be.

“When I see a man ... I see the only entity in nature with which sanctity is associated. The particular individual may not be dear to me—in fact, I may even dislike him. But he is dear to someone else, to his mother, for example, although that, too, is not the reason for his eminence. For even if nobody cares for him, he is still a human being.”