“In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger, and is at best the object of pity... Worldly history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means. The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer “These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; they follow rules of their own making.” Mark 7:6-7 “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” Henri J.M. Nouwen