Paying Attention
“We who see others in the grip of malheur [“affliction”] are obliged, first and foremost, to pay attention – to pay the same absolute attention that God deserves . . . Love of God and love of neighbor – the two-fold commandment that Jesus said summed up all the law and the prophets – begins and in a sense also ends in attention. To attend to God is difficult because he is absent; to attend to the person marked by malheur is equally difficult but for the opposite reason: she is too present. Everything in us wants to turn away. It is this temptation that must be resisted.”
– Alan Jacobs, The Year of our Lord 1943