miniZibaldone

From America magazine   L'arche's story in the library: http://bookslibrarycebu.blogspot.com/2016/03/books-sorted-theology-library-Marmion-Rose-architecture-Sungenis-Vanier-Forte-Church-Haffert-homosexuality-Harvey-Kipley-Kreeft-Pannenberg.html

That of the Christian in the world is a wonderful mission, is a mission for all, is a mission of service, without exception; it requires so much generosity and  especially his eyes and heart turned on high, to invoke the Lord’s help. There is so much need for Christians who testify with joy the Gospel in everyday life. From the angelus The missionaries always preach a message of salvation to all; not only the missionaries who go away, even us, Christian missionaries who say a good word for  salvation. And this is the gift that Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit. This announcement is to say: “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.” (v. 9), because Jesus has  [“approached”] God to us; God became one of us; in Jesus, God reigns in our midst, His merciful love overcomes sin and human misery....  And this is the Good News that the “laborers” should bring to everyone a message of hope and consolation, peace and charity. When Jesus sends His disciples ahead of  Him i...

The epicentre of his [a Christian's] heart is outside of himself. He is not drawn by his own “I”, but by the “Thou” of God and by the “we” of other men and women. From the homily Contemplating the Heart of Christ, we are faced with the fundamental question of our priestly life: Where is my heart directed? Our ministry is often full of plans,  projects and activities: from catechesis to liturgy, to works of charity, to pastoral and administrative commitments. Amid all these, we must still ask ourselves:  What is my heart set on, where is it directed, what is the treasure that it seeks? For as Jesus says: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt  6:21). ...  To help our hearts burn with the charity of Jesus the Good Shepherd, we can train ourselves to do three things suggested to us by today’s readings: seek out,  include and rejoice....  Such is a heart that seeks out – a heart that does not set aside times and spaces as private, a ...

Through Mary’s service towards others, through that encounter, our Lord’s promise is renewed and makes it happen now, just as it did then. From the homily “Christians with a grimace or disgruntled expression on their faces, sad Christians, are a very ugly thing.  It’s really ugly, ugly, ugly. However, they are not  fully Christian. They think they are (Christians) but they are not fully so. This is the Christian message. And in this atmosphere of joy that today’s liturgy gives  us like a gift, I would like to underline just two things: first, an attitude; second, a fact. The attitude is one of service or helping others.” ...  “The courage of women. The courageous women who are present in the Church: they are like Mary. These women who bring up their families, these women who are  responsible for rearing their children, who have to face so many hardships, so much pain, women who look after the sick….   Courageous: they get up and help other  people...

No Christian can exist without joy. Christians live in joy and amazement because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. From the homily "A Christian is a man, or a woman, of joy: a man and a woman with joy in their heart. There is no Christian without joy!”  You may be told that there are many such Christians, the Pope warned, but  “they are not Christians! They say they are, but they are not! They are missing something.” “The Christian identity card is joy, the Gospel’s joy, the joy of having been chosen by Jesus, saved by Jesus, regenerated by Jesus; the joy of that hope that Jesus is waiting for us, the joy that - even with the crosses and sufferings we bear in this life - is expressed in another way, which is peace in the certainty that Jesus accompanies us, is with us. " "The Christian,” he added,   “grows in joy through trusting in God. God always remembers his covenant." And in turn, "the Christian knows that God remembers him, that God loves him , ...

For Jesus to feel mercy was equivalent to sharing in the sadness of the one He met but at the same time working personally to transform it into joy. From the audience Among the many aspects of mercy, there is one that consists in feeling compassion or being moved in face of those who are in need of love. Pietas – piety – is a  concept that was present in the Greco-Roman world, where, however, it indicated an act of submission to superiors: first of all the devotion owed to the gods, then  the respect of children for their parents, especially the elderly. Today, instead, we must be careful not to identify piety with that rather defused pietism, which  is only a superficial emotion and offends the other’s dignity. In the same way, this piety is not to be confused either with the compassion we feel for the animals  that live with us, and remaining indifferent in face of the sufferings of brothers. How often do we see people attached to cats and dogs, who then leav...

A Christian does not anesthetize pain. From the homily “This is (the impact of) what joy and hope together can have on our lives, when we are facing tribulations, when we have problems, when we are suffering.  It is not an anesthesia.  Pain is pain but if lived through with joy and hope it will open the door for you to the joy of a new being. This image of the Lord should give us great hope amidst our difficulties: difficulties that often are awful, horrible difficulties that can even make us doubt our faith… But with joy and hope we journey forward because after this tempest  a new man arrives, just like with a woman giving birth. And Jesus tells us that this is a lasting joy and hope that will not go away.” “A joy without hope is just enjoyment, a temporary happiness.  A hope without joy is not hope and doesn’t extend beyond a healthy optimism. Joy and hope always journey together and both of them create this explosion that the Church in her liturgy almost cr...

T he biggest threat to growing up well comes from thinking that no one cares about us - and that is always a sadness - from feeling that we are all alone. The Lord, on the other hand, is always with you and he is happy to be with you. From the homily Dear young friends, at this stage in your lives you have a growing desire to demonstrate and receive affection. The Lord, if you let him teach you, will show you how to make tenderness and affection even more beautiful. He will guide your hearts to “love without being possessive”, to love others without trying to own them but letting them be free. Because love is free! There is no true love that is not free! The freedom that the Lord gives to us is his love for us. He is always close to each one of us. There is always a temptation to let our affections be tainted by an instinctive desire to “have to have” what we find pleasing; this is selfishness. Our consumerist culture reinforces this tendency. Yet when we hold on too tightly to so...

Docility to the Spirit is a source of joy. From a homily "In days past, the Church has shown us how there can be a drama of resisting the Spirit: closed, hard, foolish hearts resisting the Spirit. We’ve seen things - the healing of the lame man by Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple; the words and the great things Stephen was doing … but they were closed off to these signs of the Spirit and resisted the Spirit. They were seeking to justify this resistance with a so-called fidelity to the law, that is, to the letter of the law."  In referring to the reading, Pope Francis said that "the Church proposes the opposite: no resistance to the Spirit, but docility to the Spirit, which is precisely the attitude of the Christian.” He continued: “Being docile to the Spirit, this docility is the yes that the Spirit may act and move forward to build up the Church.”   [link]   From an address We too are living in a time of martyrdom, and in the midst of a culture...

In this exclamation, “It is the Lord,” there is all of the enthusiasm of paschal faith. “It is the Lord,” full of joy and wonder, in stark contrast with the confusion, the desperation, the sense of impotence that had afflicted the spirit of the disciples. From the Regina Caeli The Gospel of today tells of the third apparition of the Risen Jesus to the disciples...  The story is placed in the framework of the daily life of the disciples, when they have returned to their lands and their work as fishermen, after the distressing days of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord. It was difficult for them to understand what had happened. But while everything seemed to have ended, it is once again Jesus who “seeks” his disciples. It is he who goes in search of them. [...]  The presence of the Risen Jesus transforms everything: darkness is overcome by light; useless work becomes again fruitful and promising; the feeling of tiredness and abandonment gives way to a new st...

May the Virgin Mary give us the certainty of faith that suffered every step of our journey, illuminated by the light of Easter, will become a blessing and joy for us and for others, especially for those who suffer because of selfishness and indifference. From the Regina Caeli "Life - he said - has conquered death. Mercy and love won over sin! There is need for faith and hope to open this wonderful new horizon. Let us be pervaded by emotions that resonate in the Easter sequence: "Yes, we are certain: Christ is truly Risen". This truth indelibly marked the lives of the apostles after the Resurrection, who again felt the need to follow their Master and received the Holy Spirit, fearlessly going out to proclaim to everyone what they had seen with their own eyes and personally experienced". "In this Jubilee Year - he continued - we are called to rediscover and to welcome the comforting announcement of the resurrection with particular intensity: "Christ...

Announce the Easter message, to awaken and resurrect hope in hearts burdened by sadness, in those who struggle to find meaning in life. This is so necessary today. However, we must not proclaim ourselves. Rather, as joyful servants of hope, we must announce the Risen One . From the Easter Vigil homily Peter was looking for Jesus, not himself. He preferred the path of encounter and trust. And so, he got up, just as he was, and ran towards the tomb from where he would return “amazed” (v. 12). This marked the beginning of Peter’s resurrection, the resurrection of his heart. [...]  We, like Peter and the women, cannot discover life by being sad, bereft of hope. Let us not stay imprisoned within ourselves, but let us break open our sealed tombs to the Lord so that he may enter and grant us life. Let us give him the stones of our rancour and the boulders of our past, those heavy burdens of our weaknesses and falls. Christ wants to come and take us by the hand to bring us out of...

But we too remember that each of us knows the extent to which we too are often blind, lacking the radiant light of faith, not because we do not have the Gospel close at hand, but because of an excess of complicated theology. We feel that our soul thirsts for spirituality, not for a lack of Living Water which we only sip from, but because of an excessive “bubbly” spirituality, a “light” spirituality. We feel ourselves also trapped, not so much by insurmountable stone walls or steel enclosures that affect many peoples, but rather by a digital, virtual worldliness that is opened and closed by a simple click . From the Chrism Mass homily The first area where we see God showing excess in his ever-increasing mercy is that of encounter . He gives himself completely and in such a way that every encounter leads to rejoicing. [...]  It would be good for us to ask ourselves: after going to confession, do I rejoice? Or do I move on immediately to the next thing, as we would after going...

From the general audience At times, we too can live a sort of exile, when loneliness, suffering, and death make us think that God has abandoned us. How many times we have heard this word:  “God has forgotten me”: they are persons that suffer and feel themselves abandoned. Instead, how many of our brothers are living at this time a real and tragic  situation of exile, far from their homeland, with their eyes still beholding the ruin of their homes, with fear in their heart and often, unfortunately, sorrow for  the loss of dear persons! In such cases, one can ask oneself: where is God? How is it possible that so much suffering can befall men, women and innocent children?  And when they seek to enter somewhere they see the doors close. And they are there, at the border because so many doors and so many hearts are closed. The immigrants  of today that suffer cold, are without food and cannot enter, do not experience hospitality. It pleases me so much when I see ...

The concrete sign that we have truly encountered Jesus is the joy we experience in communicating it also to others. To encounter Jesus is the same as encountering His love. This love transforms us and enables us to transmit to others the strength that it gives us. In some way, we  can say that from the day of Baptism each one of us was given a new name, in addition to the one already given by our mother and father, and this name is  “Cristoforo”: we are all “Cristofori.” What does it mean? “Bearers of Christ.” [...] The mercy we receive from the Father is not given to us as a private consolation, but it makes us instruments, so that others can also receive the same gift. There is  a stupendous circularity between mercy and mission. [full text]

From a dialogue Saint Augustine said a very beautiful phrase. Each one of you must learn it in his own language. Speaking of the Christian life, of the joy of Christian life, he said this: “Sing and walk.” Christian life is a way, but it isn’t a sad way; it is a joyful way, so he sings. Sing and walk, don’t forget! Each one must say it in his own language: sing and walk! [...] But always remember: God alone is good and, if you want to find goodness, go to the Lord. He is all goodness, all love, all mercy. And do you know what I do to be somewhat good? I come close to the Lord. And I ask the Lord: “Lord, may I not be such a sinner, may I not be so bad, may I not do evil things to anyone; may I not have jealousies, envies, may I not get roped in, in so many ways ...” [...] To get angry is something that not only harms the other person, but it harms oneself, it poisons one. And there are people, whom you undoubtedly know, that have a bitter spirit, who are always bitter, who live ang...

From an angelus And this is a great mystery, God is humble! It is we who are proud, filled with vanity and we believe ourselves to be something great, [but] we are nothing! He, the great, is humble and is made a child. This is a real mystery! God is humble. This is beautiful! [...]  During the Christmas season, we remember His childhood. To grow in faith, we need to contemplate Baby Jesus more often. [...]  As you see, we know little of the Child Jesus, but we can learn a lot from Him if we look at the lives of children. It is a good habit that parents, grandparents, have, to look at children, what they do. [...]  And it is necessary for us to put Jesus at the center of our lives and to know, even if it could seem paradoxical, that we have a responsibility to protect Him. He wishes to be in our arms, wishes to be cared for and to be able to fix His gaze on us. Also, make Baby Jesus smile by demonstrating to him our love and joy because He is in our midst. His smile is ...

From a message Jesus is the radiant “day” which has dawned on the horizon of humanity.  A day of mercy, in which God our Father has revealed his great tenderness to the entire world.  A day of light, which dispels the darkness of fear and anxiety.  A day of peace, which makes for encounter, dialogue and reconciliation.  A day of joy: a “great joy” for the poor, the lowly and for all the people (cf. Lk 2:10). [full text]

From the homily This third Sunday of Advent draws our gaze towards Christmas, which is now close. We cannot let ourselves be taken in by weariness. [...]  The Apostle Paul takes with force the teaching of the prophet Zephaniah and reiterates: "The Lord is near" (Phil 4,5). Because of this we should rejoice always, and  with our affability give all witness of closeness and care that God has for each person. [...] H e who is baptized knows he has a greater commitment. Faith in Christ leads to a journey that lasts for a lifetime: to be merciful, like the Father. [full text]

From a letter for World Day Prayer for Vocations 2016 All the baptized may experience the joy of belonging to the Church and rediscover that the Christian vocation, just like every particular vocation, is born from  within the People of God, and is a gift of divine mercy. [...] Each vocation in the Church has its origin in the compassionate gaze of Jesus. Conversion and vocation are two sides of the same coin, and continually remain  interconnected throughout the whole of the missionary disciple’s life. [...] The ecclesial dynamism of the call is an antidote to indifference and to individualism. It establishes the communion in which indifference is vanquished by love,  because it demands that we go beyond ourselves and place our lives at the service of God’s plan, embracing the historical circumstances of his holy people. [...] No one is called exclusively for a particular region, or for a group or for an ecclesial movement, but rather for the Church and for the wor...