The great tasks facing the ecclesial community in the modern world – and among the many I particularly stress evangelization and ecumenism – are centered on the Word of God and, at the same time, draw therefrom their justification and support.
Love is the very process of passing over, of transformation, of stepping outside the limitations of fallen humanity – in which we are all separated from one another and ultimately impenetrable to one another – into an infinite otherness.
At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more reasonable than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just.
The Church is not an association that wishes to promote a certain cause. It is not about a cause. It is about the person of Jesus Christ.
I urge you to continue your fraternal cooperation with one another in the spirit of the community of Christ’s disciples, united in your love for him and in the Gospel that you proclaim.
If Jesus has become your hope, communicate this to others with your joy and your spiritual, apostolic and social engagement. Let Christ dwell within you, and having placed all your faith and trust in Him, spread this hope around you. Make choices that demonstrate your faith.
In the pierced heart of the Crucified, God’s own heart is opened up – here we see who God is and what he is like. Heaven is no longer locked up. God has stepped out of his hiddenness.
Let us allow ourselves to be ‘infected’ by St. Joseph’s silence! We need it greatly, in a world that is often too noisy, that does not favor meditation or listening to the voice of God.
The world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds that refuse to be perceived as mere objects of pleasure.
Violence against even one human being is violence against all.
The highest things, the things that really matter, we cannot achieve on our own; we have to accept them as gifts and enter in to the dynamic of the gift, so to speak.
For in this world, marked by sin, the gravitational pull of our lives is weighted by the chains of the “I” and the “self.” These chains must be broken to free us for a new love that places us in another gravitational field where we can enter new life.
Our first experience of God is so important, we either experience Him as the police guard that wants to punish or as Creative Love that awaits.
Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder. We stand before the God we know and love as a friend, the vastness of his creation, and the beauty of our Christian faith.
The fundamental task of the evangelization of culture is the challenge to make God visible in the human face of Jesus.
Continue to witness to the Gospel every day and commit yourselves generously in the next missionary initiatives in the Diocese of Rome.
The missionary experience is part of Christian formation and it is important for adolescents and young people to be able to live it personally.
In the world in which we live, it is almost a necessity to be able to regain one’s strength of body and spirit, especially for those who live in the city, where the conditions of life, often feverish, leave little room for silence, reflection and relaxed contact with nature.
At the judgment, in response to our questions, the Lord will show us his wounds, and we will understand. In the meantime, however, he simply expects us to stand by him and to believe what these wounds tell us, even though we cannot work right through the logic of this world.
Love alone makes us happy, because we live in relation, and we live to love and to be loved.