"It is indeed haste, so present in our lives, that very often prevents us from
feeling compassion. Those who think that their own journey must take precedence
are not willing to stop for another. But here comes someone who is actually
able to stop: he is a Samaritan, hence a person belonging to a despised people
...Religiosity does not enter into this. This Samaritan simply stops because he is a man faced with another man in need of
help. Compassion is expressed through practical gestures... because if you want to help
someone, you cannot think of keeping your distance, you have to get involved,
get dirty, perhaps be contaminated; he binds the wounds after cleaning them
with oil and wine; he loads him onto his horse, taking on the burden, because
one who truly helps is willing to feel the weight of the other’s pain;
he takes him to an inn where he spends money, 'two silver coins', more or less
two days of work; and he undertakes to return and eventually pay more, because
the other is not a package to deliver, but someone to care for. Dear brothers
and sisters, when will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having
compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each
one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care
of us will make us more capable of compassion. Let us pray, then, that we can
grow in humanity, so that our relationships may be truer and richer in
compassion. Let us ask the Heart of Jesus for the grace increasingly to have
the same feelings as him."
--Pope Leo XIV, General Audience, May 28, 2025
"I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said
designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be
free.... [S]uch persons of suitable condition, will be received into
the armed service of the United States.... And upon this act, sincerely
believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon
military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and
the gracious favor of Almighty God."
--Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863
"When he [Jesus] says he has manifested God's name and that he will manifest it further, he is not speaking of some new word that he has communicated to men as a particularly felicitious designation for God. The revelation of the name is a new mode of God's presence among men, a radically new way in which God makes his home with them. In Jesus, God gives himself entirely into the world of mankind: whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (cf. Jn. 14:9)."
--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part Two: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press, 2011), pp. 91--92
