“Only if there is love, if hearts are opened, can one person truly know the other.”
— Pope Benedict XVI
“Following Jesus in faith is to walk with him in the communion of the Church. You cannot follow Jesus alone.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The language of art is a ‘parabolic’ language, with a special openness to the universal: the ‘Way of Beauty’ is a way capable of leading the mind and heart to the Lord, to elevate them to the heights of God.”
“Mission is a workshop where there is room for all.”
“We are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust.”
“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.”
“God’s love does not distinguish between the infant in the mother’s womb or the child or the youth or the adult or the older person. In each one God sees His image and likeness. Human life is a manifestation of God and His glory.”
“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.”
“This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“To the extent that we nourish ourselves on Christ and are in love with him, we feel within us the incentive to bring others to him: Indeed, we cannot keep the joy of the faith to ourselves; we must pass it on.”
“God’s heart calls to our hearts, inviting us to come out of ourselves, to forsake our human certainties, to trust in him and, by following his example, to make ourselves a gift of unbounded love.”
“The Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord’s continuing passion in the members of his mystical body, the church in every age.”
“Thank you from the heart to all those who in various ways are near me or follow me spiritually with affection and prayers from afar. To each one of you, I ask you to continue to support me by praying to God to let me be his gentle and firm pastor of his church.”
“A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.”
“Freedom is not only a gift, but a summons to personal responsibility.”
“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.”
“Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”
“The need to proclaim Christ boldly and courageously is a continuing priority for the Church; indeed it is a solemn duty laid upon her by Christ who enjoined the Apostles to ‘go out to the whole world, proclaim the Good News to all creation.’”
“How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him. How much pride, how much self-sufficiency.”
“Before it’s too late, we need to make courageous choices that will recreate a strong alliance between man and Earth. We need a decisive ‘yes’ to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible.”
“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.”
“Ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering.”
“Deeply saddened by the news of the terrorist attacks in central London, the Holy Father offers his fervent prayers for the victims and for all those who mourn.”
“Make sure that every person, of whatever background, can find in you a welcoming heart.”
“The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment ultimately stems from their relationship with God. When ’man turns his back on the Creator’s plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order.”
“Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly.”
“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.”
“A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God.”
“Men and women cannot rest content with a superficial and unquestioning exchange of skeptical opinions and experiences of life – all of us are in search of truth and we share this profound yearning today more than ever...”
“Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene is a classic example of science fiction.”
“We can fall, but in the end we fall into God’s hands, and God’s hands are good hands.”
“We were looking for a ‘good shepherd,’ and instead we got a German shepherd.”
“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. We are all scandalized by the sins and failures of some of the Church’s members.”
“In the month of October, the universal Church highlights her missionary vocation. Guided by the Holy Spirit she knows she is called to pursue the work of Jesus himself, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God which is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit””
“If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God Who gave His Son for us!”
“We must trust in the mighty power of God’s mercy. We are all sinners, but His grace transforms us and makes us new.”
“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.”
“Poverty is a plague against which humanity must fight without cease.”
“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.”
“You must know your faith with the same precision with which a specialist in information technology knows the operating system of a computer.”
“Discovering the beauty and joy of faith is a path that every new generation must take on its own.”
“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!”
“Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.”
“God loves us; we need only to summon up the humility to allow ourselves to be loved.”
“Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.”
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