Trade unions have been an essential force for social change, without which a semblance of a decent and humane society is impossible under capitalism.
Babies cry, make noise, go here and there. But it annoys me when a baby cries in church and there are those who say he needs to go out. The cry of a baby is God’s voice: never drive them away from the church!
It is important to integrate immigrants into society and to welcome them in the church community.
Being a Christian is not just about following commandments: it is about letting Christ take possession of our lives and transform them.
The world is polarized. The middle class becomes smaller. The polarization makes the difference between rich and the poor big. This is true.
Poverty is part of the natural condition and that is bad enough. But my task is to prevent the aggravation of this condition.
God chooses the Pope and God also made men and women different.
There is nothing the Church can do except try to educate people to become good consumers.
I’m the type of human who is interested most in the truth. God gave me a healthy love for the truth.
Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs, or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.
If our hearts are closed, if our hearts are made of stone, the stones find their way into our hands and we are ready to throw them.
Jesus on the cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it; he defeats it with his resurrection. This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the cross. Christ’s cross, embraced with love, never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little of what he did on the day of his death.
We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is contrary to human dignity.
By welcoming a marginalized person whose body is wounded and by welcoming the sinner whose soul is wounded, we put our credibility as Christians on the line. Let us always remember the words of Saint John of the Cross: “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs. – St John Chrysostom.
Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
The Church does not exist to condemn people but to bring about an encounter with the visceral love of God’s mercy.
The fragility of our era is this, too: we don’t believe that there is a chance for redemption; for a hand to raise you up; for an embrace to save you, forgive you, pick you up, flood you with infinite, patient, indulgent love; to put you back on your feet. We need mercy.
St. Paul says that “the love of Christ compels us,” but this “compels us” can also be translated as “possesses us.” And so it is: love attracts us and sends us; it draws us in and gives us to others.
The Church Fathers teach us that a shattered heart is the most pleasing gift to God. It is the sign that we are conscious of our sins, of the evil we have done, of our wretchedness, and of our need for forgiveness and mercy.