Families have a citizenship which is divine. The identity card they have is given to them by God. So that within the heart of the family, truth, goodness and beauty may truly grow.
Truth, according to the Christian faith, is God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship.
We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.
From my point of view, God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us.
All of us benefit from remembering our past. A people which remembers does not repeat past errors; instead, it looks with confidence to the challenges of the present and the future.
Vanity, showing off, is an attitude that reduces spirituality to a worldly thing, which is the worst sin that could be committed in the church.
Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.
The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better.
Remembrance saves a people’s soul from whatever or whoever would attempt to dominate it or use it for their interests.
The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God.
I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.
In the Church, and in the journey of faith, women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord.
If globalization seeks to bring all of us together, but to do so respecting each person, each individual person’s peculiarity, that globalization is good and makes us good and grow and leads to peace.
This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.
A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon, must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation.
Despite the slowness, the infidelity, the errors and sins it committed and might still commit against its members, the Church, trust me, has no other meaning and goal but to live and witness Jesus.
I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.
Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.
My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.
The Church is or should go back to being a community of God’s people, and priests, pastors and bishops, who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God.