"To comfort, you must love.."

This is a picture of the new library at Loyola where we had all of our prayer sessions and Liturgies. I sat facing an entire wall of glass overlooking Lake Michigan. This new building is fantastic, but I am glad we had the large room in a closer building to our dorm and cafeteria; we had round tables and sat eight to a table. We were quite a mix so I was with someone from Redwood City, California, Australia, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, New York, Washington D.C., Atherton, California, Boston, and I was from Miami so we had East Coast, West Coast, southern middle and then Australia which is pretty far away. I loved the table conversations and the exchange of ideas as we also were from over 80 down to one still in her thirties. On the last morning we had generation groups, but no time to really talk at the table as we were "passing" some things we had discussed for our next action steps.

I kept going back in prayer to a quote from Monsignor Romano Guardini that I found in Magnificat for the Feast of St. Martha, June 29. I will just give a short excerpt here as I like it so much. He is speaking about God and says that he "is nearer to us than ever a lover was to his dearest one; he bears in heart our deepest concerns and bestows on us his watchful care...God is real!...God is the Comforter...To comfort, you must love. You must be open and enter into the other's heart. You must be observant; you must have the free and sensitive heart that finds the paths of life with quiet assurance ...."