Alas, this is the last. Here it starts, here it ends, for forgiveness is meaningless when it does not start at home, in your own heart. Forgive what you have done, or should have done, or could have done and did not. In the silence of the cloister the voice of the past can haunt you, can point fingers at you, can snicker. Unless mercy is continued here it is not going to amount to much in terms of others.
Charity starts at home.
It's not a matter of liking everybody. And it is what we are called to. You don't know much as a parent or as a monk, if you don't know Christ as a Man of mercy. For if you enter the realms of mercy, your world changes. From that milieu, from that climate, your attitude is one of Jesus.