Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary.
Art means: revealing God in everything that exists.
It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.
Material possessions, in themselves, are good. We would not survive for long without money, clothing and shelter. We must eat in order to stay alive. Yet if we are greedy, if we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, then we make our possessions into a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death.
Civilization is now under the tyranny of relativism.
Every human being is loved by God the Father. No one need feel forgotten, for every name is written in the Lord's loving heart.
Lent is like a long 'retreat' during which we can turn back into ourselves and listen to the voice of God, in order to defeat the temptations of the Evil One. It is a period of spiritual 'combat' which we must experience alongside Jesus, not with pride and presumption, but using the arms of faith: prayer, listening to the word of God and penance. In this way we will be able to celebrate Easter in truth, ready to renew the promises of our Baptism.
It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.
In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration.
I have a mustard seed; and I am not afraid to use it.
Look at the face of the other... discover that he has a soul, a history and a life, that he is a person and that God loves this person.
The experience of [the African] bishops is that evangelization itself should be foremost, that the God of Jesus Christ must be known, believed in and loved, and that hearts must be converted if progress is to be made on social issues and reconciliation is to begin, and if - for example - AIDS is to be combated by realistically facing its deeper causes and the sick are to be given the loving care they need. Social issues and the Gospel are inseparable.
Everything in this world will pass away. In eternity only Love will remain.
Because the truth of God is love, conversion to God is conversion to love.
An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties.
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.
Many people perceive Christianity as something institutional - rather than as an encounter with Christ - which explains why they don't see it as a source of joy.
Being a Christian means having love. That is unbelievably difficult and, at the same time, incredibly simple.
No law made by man can overturn that of the Creator without dramatically affecting society in its very foundation.
Each of us has a mission . . . each of us is called to change the world, to work for a culture of life, a culture forged by love and respect for the dignity of each human person.
God is always faithful to His promises, but He often surprises us in the way He fulfills them.
God is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self.
It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.
To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity.
God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the Earth.
If we take the Lord's hand and let ourselves be guided by him, the path we take will be right and good.
The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people.
The happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist.
Only if there is love, if hearts are opened, can one person truly know the other.
Do not be afraid of seeming different and being criticized for what might seem to be losing or out of fashion; your peers but adults too, especially those who seem more distant from the mindset and values of the Gospel, are crying out to see someone who dares to live according to the fullness of humanity revealed by Jesus Christ.
Freedom is not only a gift, but a summons to personal responsibility.
Jesus’ example of fidelity to prayer challenges us to examine the time and effort we devote to our own prayer. While prayer is a gift of God, it is also an art learned through constant practice. Jesus teaches us to pray constantly, but also to bear witness before others of the beauty of prayer, self-surrender and complete openness to God.
The Catechism was not written to please you. It will not make life easy for you, because it demands of you a new life.
The story of Mary of Magdalene reminds us all of a fundamental truth...A disciple of Christ is one who, in the experience of human weakness, has had the humility to ask for his help, has been healed by him and has set out following closely after him, becoming a witness of the power of his merciful love that is stronger than sin and death.
This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands . . . Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.
The Holy Spirit gives us joy. And he is joy. Joy is the gift in which all the other gifts are included. It is the expression of happiness, of being in harmony with ourselves, that which can only come from being in harmony with God and with his creation. It belongs to the nature of joy to be radiant; it must communicate itself. The missionary spirit of the Church is none other than the impulse to communicate the joy which has been given.
Vacation time offers the unique opportunity to pause before the thought-provoking spectacles of nature, a wonderful "book" within reach of everyone, adults and children. In contact with nature, a person rediscovers his correct dimension, rediscovers himself as a creature, small but at the same time unique, with a "capacity for God" because interiorly he is open to the Infinite.
God loves us; we need only to summon up the humility to allow ourselves to be loved.
If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One that loves you.
The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.
Music has no borders, no race or color, no limits of country, no ethnicity. Music makes the people come together. Dance it,Dance all.
While we too always seek other signs, other wonders, we do not realize that he is the real sign, God made flesh; he is the greatest miracle of the universe: all the love of God hidden in a human heart, in a human face.
Do you want to know yourself better? Then discover silence.
May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.
Advent's intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church's year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart's memory so that it can discern the star of hope.
May we be enlightened by a ray of the light that comes from Bethlehem, the light of He who is 'The Greatest' and made himself small.
Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.
Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.
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.
Christianity is not a new philosophy or new morality. We are Christians only if we encounter Christ... Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we really become Christians... Therefore, let us pray to the Lord to enlighten us, so that, in our world, he will grant us the encounter with his presence, and thus give us a lively faith, an open heart, and great charity for all, capable of renewing the world.
In a world wounded by conflicts, where violence is justified in God's name, it's important to repeat that religion can never become a vehicle of hatred, it can never be used in God's name to justify violence.
We must trust in the mighty power of God's mercy. We are all sinners, but His grace transforms us and makes us new.
It was easy to know the doctrine. It's much harder to help a billion people live it.
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.
Making the sign of the Cross - as we will do during the Blessing - means saying a visible and public "yes" to the One who died and rose for us, to God who in the humility and weakness of his love is the Almighty, stronger than all the power and intelligence of the world.
You must know your faith with the same precision with which a specialist in information technology knows the operating system of a computer.
Friends, do not be afraid of silence or stillness. Listen to God. Adore Him in the Eucharist.
Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life.
We are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust.
From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the profoundest sense to himself not through what he does but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift... One must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved... If he declines to let himself be presented with the gift, then he destroys himself.
God came into the world to reawaken the thirst for great things in us.
One who has hope lives differently.
If we allow the love of Christ to change our heart, then we can change the world. This is the secret of authentic happiness.
Each of you has a personal vocation which He has given you for your own joy and sanctity. When a person is conquered by the fire of His gaze, no sacrifice seems too great to follow Him and give Him the best of ourselves. This is what the saints have always done, spreading the light of the Lord ... and transforming the world into a welcoming home for everyone.
Purity of heart is what enables us to see.
The cross reminds us that there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain.
Dear young people, the happiness you are seeking, the happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist. Only he gives the fullness of life to humanity! With Mary, say your own "yes" to God, for he wishes to give himself to you.
We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.
The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right – it is the very opposite. It is “a deep wound in society”.
Jesus Christ does not teach us a spirituality “of closed eyes”, but one of “alertness”, one which entails an absolute duty to take notice of the needs of others and of situations involving those whom the Gospel tells us are our neighbours. The gaze of Jesus, what “his eyes” teach us, leads to human closeness, solidarity, giving time, sharing our gifts and even our material goods.
Help each other to live and to grow in the Christian faith so as to be valiant witnesses of the Lord. Be united, but not closed. Be humble, but not fearful. Be simple, but not naive. Be thoughtful, but not complicated. Enter into dialogue with others, but be yourselves.
In the face of horror ... there is no other answer than the cross of Christ: Love that descends to the abyss of evil.
What a treasure is hidden in two small words: 'thank you!'
We are no longer able to hear God - There are too many frequencies filling our ears.
It is necessary not only to relieve the gravest needs but to go to their roots, proposing measures that will give social, political and economic structures a more equitable and solidaristic configuration.
Holiness never goes out of fashion.
Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a sycophant who bows before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashions. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was anonymous voices that cried 'away with him! Crucify him!'
How much we need, in the church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a living relationship with Christ!
There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.
We can fall, but in the end we fall into God's hands, and God's hands are good hands.
Indeed, truth draws strength from itself and not from the number of votes in its favour.
Music, great music, distends the spirit, arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer.
Every human life is precious in God's sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere.
Everything is a gift from God: it is only by recognizing this crucial dependence on the Creator that we will find freedom and peace.
When, for example, in the name of non-discrimination, people try to force the Catholic Church to change her position on homosexuality or the ordination of women, then that means that she is no longer allowed to live out her own identity and that, instead, an abstract, negative religion is being made into a tyrannical standard that everyone must follow. That is then seemingly freedom — for the sole reason that it is liberation from the previous situation.
The capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reigns supreme.
The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness.
It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs. ... The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in work, in action and in law.
We live in a society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be 'filled' with initiatives, activity, sound; often there is not even time to listen and dialogue... Let us not be afraid to be silent outside and inside ourselves, so that we are able not only to perceive God's voice, but also the voice of the person next to us, the voices of others.
Make sure that every person, of whatever background, can find in you a welcoming heart.
Without the Eucharist, the Church simply does not exist.
When politicians presume to do God's work, they do not become divine but diabolical.
Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything,...There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society.
The new evangelization ... begins in the confessional.
Dear friends, may no adversity paralyze you. Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world.
Love alone makes us happy, because we live in relation, and we live to love and to be loved.
A dictatorship of relativism is being built that recognizes nothing as definite, and which leaves as the ultimate measure only one's ego and desires ... Having a clear faith, according to the credo of the church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. Yet relativism, that is, letting oneself being carried 'here and there by any wind of doctrine,' appears as the sole attitude good enough for modern times.
Jesus, the Word incarnate, is always the center of our announcement, the point of reference for our evangelizing mission and for its methodology, because He is the human face of God, who wishes to meet all men and women so as to bring them into communion with Him, in His love.
It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.
Do not believe that living together before marriage guarantees the future. By burning certain stages, you risk burning love itself. Time needs to be respected gradually, just like the expressions of love.
Joy is the true gift of Christmas, and we can communicate this joy simply: with a smile, a kind gesture, a little help, forgiveness. And the joy we give will certainly come back to us.
If in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be 'devout' and to perform my 'religious duties', then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely 'proper', but loveless.
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with capacity for conversion, repentance, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness.
Dear young people, do not be satisfied with anything less than Truth and Love, do not be content with anything less than Christ
Do not be afraid of Christ. He takes nothing away and he gives you everything.
Truth is not determined by a majority vote.
Guilt must not be allowed to fester in the silence of the soul, poisoning it from within. It needs to be confessed. Through confession we bring it into the light, we place it within Christ's purifying love. In confession, the Lord washes our soiled feet over and over again and prepares us for table fellowship with him.
Love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty.
God seeks us where we are, not so that we stay there, but so that we may come to be where He is, so that we may get beyond ourselves.
Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed.
Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants to magnify God, not herself.
The essence of Christianity...is an ever-new encounter with... the God who speaks to us, who approaches us and who befriends us!
We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.
How can it be that the most wonderous and sacred human space - the womb - has become a place of unutterable violence?
I am convinced that music really is the universal language of beauty which can bring together all people of good will on earth
If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful, and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed.
Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.
Forgiveness does not replace justice.
Believing is nothing other than, in the darkness of the world, touching the hand of God, and in this way, in silence, hearing the Word, seeing love.
Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That He can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with Him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.
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.
The more ardent the love for the Eucharist in the hearts of the Christian people, the more clearly will they recognize the goal of all mission: to bring Christ to others. Not just a theory or a way of life inspired by Christ, but the gift of his very person. Anyone who has not shared the truth of love with his brothers and sisters has not yet given enough.
In a world where there is so much noise, so much bewilderment, there is a need for silent adoration of Jesus concealed in the Host. Be assiduous in the prayer of adoration and teach it to the faithful. It is a source of comfort and light, particularly to those who are suffering.
I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry. A writer once said that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn't think we were so important.
