" world, take my heart, which shrinks from the stark realism and ugliness of suffering, and expand it with Your love. Open it wide with the fire of Your love, as a rose is opened by the heat of the sun. Drive me by the strength of Your tenderness to come close to human pain. Give me hands that are hardened by pity, that will dip into any water and bathe any wound in mercy. Give me Your hands, hands that heal the blind by their touch, hands that raise the dead and are nailed to the cross; give me Your hands to tend the wounds of the body and the wounds of the mind. "

― Caryll Houselander , The Way of the Cross