galatians on Selflessness

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your ...

Let this be thy whole Endeavour, this thy prayer, this thy desire, that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of persons I know who model for me the depths of spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary bat...

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.

Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.

“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.”

Like the Good Samaritan, may we not be ashamed of touching the wounds of those who suffer, but try to heal them with concrete acts of love.

One of the most powerful expressions of humble, servant-like caring for others is found in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce , in the character of Sarah Smith of Golders Green. Her quiet life of love tra...

What he [Jesus] was attempting to instill in his disciples was the attitude of a servant: humility and a willingness to put others ahead of oneself. In that culture, washing the feet of others would s...

The context Having addressed his disciples with the blessings and woes (6:20-26), Jesus now addresses the multitude of people (6:17, cf. 7:1). As with the blessings and woes, Luke records four impera...

Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused wit...

Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

A chaplain was speaking to a soldier on a cot in a hospital. “You have lost an arm in the great cause,” he said. “No,” said the soldier with a smile. “I didn’t lose it–I gave it.” In that same way, Je...

Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man, myself.

Jesus reassures us that every effort to love ourselves and others more faithfully, however imperfectly we are able to do this, is a response to God's call to love as he loved. It is a response to ...

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

For the times when we fail to notice others’ needs, we repent. For our apathy for those you’ve entrusted to us, we repent. For the amount of time we spend focused on ourselves, we repent. For fa...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

‘Salvation’ is a wonderfully wide-ranging word and it would be a great mistake to think that it refers only to the forgiveness of our sins. God is as much concerned with our present and future as with...

Cruciform love is welcoming the immigrant simply because they bear the image of God, even if the only thing they bring to us is hassle and possible harm. Cruciform love is praying for those who persec...

Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the...

Solitude... keeps us from making judgments about other people’s sins. In this way real forgiveness becomes possible. The following desert story offers a good illustration: A brother . . . committed...

What is our responsibility to our neighbor? This is a question many have asked, including the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Meditating on the topic he observed, “To patiently endure wrongs done ...

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from ...

Self-righteousness is a sense of moral superiority that appoints us as prosecutor of other people’s sinfulness. We relate to others as if we are incapable of the sins they commit. Self-righteousness w...

Marriage calls us to an entirely new and selfless life. . . . Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly began to understand that the real purpos...