Friday, August 21st, 2026

Here is a nice quote that was shared with me:

How to Receive Others in His Name
There should be no one thing more humbling in life...than the discovery of how little we understand those with whom we associate so intimately. We ought to be humble before these mysterious beings around us... Not to respect uniqueness is already to have disqualified oneself for ever understanding a human being. It is in this way that the extrovert deplores the sensitiveness of the introvert, and the introvert is secretly scornful of the insensitiveness of the extrovert. Thus two persons fail each other...where two persons might have contributed gloriously to the fulfillment of each other.
The point is not to ferret out the mysteries of another’s personality, but to wait humbly outside the portals in case one might ever be needed inside. It is a false and devouring love that seeks to pick the locks of another’s soul, but it is a humble and detached love which observes and waits at the door. When we see a companion suffering at a remark, an incident, a circumstance, we should emerge from the experience considerably wiser...
It is possible...to come to "take others for granted" in the sense that we expect them to bounce back like good tennis balls from our crude tossings of their opinions, sensibilities, and problems. But it is a possibility that should make us quail. It is indeed a tragedy to arrive at that peak of self-complacency from which we dismiss the suffering of those whose suffering differs from our own, the ideas of those whose opinions do not coincide with ours, with a facile labeling of “immature.” The best way to ensure a permanent state of unripeness in oneself is to consider oneself fully mature. We are always learners. And everyone with whom we live is our teacher, in one way or another.

Mother Mary Francis of Our Lady, p.c.c.
Mother Mary Francis († 2006) was abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico. / From Strange Gods before Me. © 2023, Cluny, P.O. Box 1664, Providence, RI.