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From 2023 Christmas Midnight Mass Homily of Pope Francis Let the seed of the Incarnation bloom within us Brothers and sisters, tonight we might ask ourselves: Which God do we believe in? In the God of incarnation or the god of achievement? Because there is always a risk that we can celebrate Christmas while thinking of God in pagan terms, as a powerful potentate in the sky; a god linked to power, worldly success, and the idolatry of consumerism. With the false image of a distant and petulant deity who treats the good well and the bad poorly; a deity made in our own image and likeness, handy for resolving our problems and removing our ills. God, on the other hand, waves no magic wand; he is no god of commerce who promises “everything all at once”. He does not save us by pushing a button, but draws near us, in order to change our world from within.... Dear brother, dear sister, to God, who changed history in the course of a census, you are not a number, but a face. Your name is written o...

   From 12-20-2023 Audience But where did this Christmas joy come from? [O]ne characteristic of the Nativity scene is that it was conceived as a school of sobriety. And this has a great deal to say to us. Today, in fact, the risk of losing sight of what counts in life is great and paradoxically increases precisely at Christmas—the mentality of Christmas is changed—immersed in a consumerism that corrodes its meaning. The consumerism of Christmas. It's true, that you want to give presents, that’s fine, that’s one way, but that frenzy to go shopping that draws attention elsewhere and there is not that sobriety of Christmas. Let us look at the crib: that awe before the crib. Sometimes there is no inner space for astonishment, but only to organise the parties, to have the parties. And the Nativity scene was created to bring us back to what matters: to God Who comes to dwell among us.  [full text]

  The Third Sunday of Advent has traditionally been marked by the note of joy. As we shall see, the joy has two causes: the proximate coming of the Lord in the incarnation and his return at the end of time. The collect for this Sunday speaks of God’s people, who “faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity,” while the collect for Wednesday of this week asks: “that the coming solemnity of your Son may bestow healing upon us in this present life and bring us the rewards of life eternal.” In fact, the prayers on the whole are clearly inspired by joyful expectation of the Nativity. Moreover, this week thinks of the kingdom as already present. ( Adrien Nocent Paul Turner,  The Liturgical Year Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, vol. 1 )

  But “the Lord does not delay in keeping his promise.” He is on his way, constantly, and, like a fisherman, he hauls the giant net of world history to shore. Viewed from within the world, whether the world’s end will be catastrophic disturbs neither God’s plan nor the Christian’s confidence. Christians simply need to strive to be “unblemished” and “to be at peace in his sight” at the homecoming. This peace prepares the way for Advent.  (Hans Urs von Balthasar,  Light of the Word: Brief Reflections on the Sunday Readings)

Maria Immaculata by Carlo Maratta Towards the end of the novel [ The Diary of the Country Priest by Georges Bernanos] (and of the priest ’ s life), the connection is made with childhood, with youthfulness. The country priest had been obsessed with his apparent failure to bring about spiritual results in his ministry. The meeting with the countess had been the first time, a meeting centered on a discussion for which he had not prepared intellectually. He had entered into it with all the innocence of his youth. Thinking back on this, he writes:  “ And I know now that youth is a gift from God, and like all his gifts, carries no regret....There was no old man in me....This awareness is sweet. For the first time in years—perhaps for the first time ever—I seem to stand before my youth and look upon it without mistrust....And my youth looks back at me, forgives me. Disheartened by the sheer clumsiness in me which always kept me back, I demanded of my youth what youth alone can't give, an...

From the homily At Christmas, the question is this: “Do I allow myself to be loved by God? Do I abandon myself to his love that comes to save me?” The grace of God has appeared. Tonight we realize that, when we failed to measure up, God became small for our sake; while we were going about our own business, he came into our midst. Christmas reminds us that God continues to love us all, even the worst of us. To me, to you, to each of us, he says today: “I love you and I will always love you, for you are precious in my eyes”. God does not love you because you think and act the right way. He loves you, plain and simple. His love is unconditional; it does not depend on you. You may have mistaken ideas, you may have made a complete mess of things, but the Lord continues to love you. How often do we think that God is good if we are good and punishes us if we are bad. Yet that is not how he is. For all our sins, he continues to love us. His love does not change. It is not fickle; i...

From the homily Each of us is called tonight to rediscover in the Risen Christ the one who rolls back from our heart the heaviest of stones. Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give into resignation and failure? . . . What is the stone that I need to remove, what is its name? . . .  Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why not make up your mind to abandon that sin which, like a stone before the entrance to your heart, keeps God’s light from entering in? Why not prefer Jesus, the true light (cf. Jn 1:9), to the glitter of wealth, career, pride and pleasure? Why not tell the empty things of this world that you no longer live for them, but for the Lord of life? . . . Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I looking? Am I gazing at graveyards, or looking for the Living One? . . . Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I going? So...

From a homily You, dear young people, are not the future. We like to say, “you are the future”. No, you are the present. You are not the future of God, you young people are the now of God . In Jesus, the promised future begins and becomes life. When? Now. Yet not everyone who was listening felt invited or called. Not all the residents of Nazareth were prepared to believe in someone they knew and had seen grow up, and who was now inviting them to realize a long-awaited dream. Not only that, but they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” ( Lk 4:22 ). The same thing can also happen with us. We do not always believe that God can be that concrete and commonplace, that close and real, and much less that he can become so present and work through somebody like a neighbour, a friend, a relative. We do not always believe that the Lord can invite us to work and soil our hands with him in his Kingdom in that simple and blunt a way. It is hard to accept that “God’s love can become concrete ...

Impossibility of abstaining and of holding myself in reserve, inability to satisfy myself, to be self-sufficient and to cut myself loose, that is what a first look at my condition reveals to me. That there is constraint and a kind of oppression in my life is not an illusion, then, nor a dialectical game, it is a brute fact of daily experience. At the principle of my acts, in the use and after the exercise of what I call my freedom, I seem to feel all the weight of necessity. Nothing in me escapes it. If I try to evade decisive initiatives, I am enslaved for not having acted. If I go ahead, I am subjugated to what I have done. In practice, no one eludes the problem of practice; and not only does each one raise it, but each, in his own way, inevitably resolves it. It is this very necessity that has to be justified. And what would it mean to justify it, if not to show that it is in conformity with the most intimate aspiration of man? —Maurice Blondel

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To turn to the fundamentals, to rediscover what is essential, through what one touches and sees in the celebration of the Sacraments. To rediscover, together with you, the beauty that is hidden in the Eucharistic Celebration and that, once revealed, gives full meaning to each one’s life. The Eucharist is a wonderful event in which Jesus Christ, our life, makes Himself present. The Lord is present there with us. We go there so often, we look at things, we chat among ourselves while the priest is celebrating the Eucharist  . . . and we don’t celebrate close to Him. But it’s the Lord! If the President of the Republic came here today or a very important person of the world, it’s certain that we would all be close to him, that we would want to greet him. But think: when you go to Mass, the Lord is there! And you are distracted. It’s the Lord!  We must give thought to this. “Father, it’s because the Masses are boring” – “But, what are you saying, that the Lord is boring?”...

How is it possible to experience work as a free subject who doesn’t depend on circumstances, but can face them head on? What is the meaning of work?

The center of the Gospel "is not the miracle [of the resurrected son], but Jesus' tenderness toward this boy's mother. Here, mercy takes the name of great compassion toward a woman who had lost her husband and now her only son is also bound for the cemetery. This mother's great sorrow moves Jesus and causes the miracle of the resurrection" From the audience St. Luke remarks on Jesus' feelings: "The Lord saw her and had compassion for her and said to her: '“Do not weep.”Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still "(vv. 13-14). Great compassion guided the actions of Jesus: it is he who stops the procession touching the coffin and, moved by deep compassion for this mother, decides to face death, as it were, face to face. And he confronts it definitively, face to face, on the Cross. " "When Jesus saw the mother crying, she entered his heart! Everyone arrives at the Holy Door everyone bringing with them thei...

St. Paul, who had been acquainted with the sporting world of his day, in the first Letter to the Corinthians, which we have just listened to, writes to those Christians living in the Greek world: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it!" (1 Cor 9:24). Here we see that the Apostle of the Gentiles, in order to bring the message of Christ to all peoples, drew from all the concepts, images, terminologies, modes of  expression, and philosophical and literary references not only of the Jewish tradition but also of Hellenic culture. And he did not hesitate to include sport among the human values which he used as points of support and reference for dialogue with the people of his time. Thus he recognized the fundamental validity of sport, considering it not just as a term of comparison to illustrate a higher ethical and aesthetic ideal, but also in its intrinsic reality as a factor in the formation of...

When we ask for work we are asking to be able to sense our dignity and, in this celebration of Saint Cajetan, we pray for that dignity that work confers on us: to be  able to bring bread home. That Work, which together with Roof and Land is in the basic framework of Human Rights. And when we ask for work to bring bread home, we  are asking for dignity. (Francis)

Very often, for this [a particular profession], too, the great criteria for a decision are only personal profit and desire. These should form part of the question, but not everything. In the choice of a job or a profession, one should keep in mind the third category we mentioned, the needs of society. For the Christian, however, these cannot be a criterion isolated from a deeper concept, the needs of the Christian community, because the needs of society are nothing else but an aspect of the needs of the Christian community, the needs of the Church in every era. (Luigi Giussani)

Professional work, whatever it is, becomes a lamp to enlighten your colleagues and friends. That is why I usually tell those who become members of Opus Dei, and the same applies to all of you now listening to me: ‘What use is it telling me that so and so is a good son of mine — a good Christian — but a bad shoemaker?’ If he doesn’t try to learn his trade well, or doesn’t give his full attention to it, he won’t be able to sanctify it or offer it to Our Lord. The sanctification of ordinary work is, as it were, the hinge of true spirituality for people who, like us, have decided to come close to God while being at the same time fully involved in temporal affairs. (Josemaria Escriva)

You might say to me: Father, but I have my limits, I am a sinner, what can I do?  When the Lord calls us, he doesn’t worry about what we are, what we have been, or  what we have done or not done.  Quite the opposite.  When he calls us, he is thinking about everything we have to give, all the love we are capable of spreading.   His bets are on the future, on tomorrow.  Jesus is pointing you to the future, and never to the museum. From the speech Where does fear lead us?  The feeling of being closed in on oneself, trapped.  Once we feel that way, our fear starts to fester and is inevitably joined by its “twin  sister”, paralysis: the feeling of being paralyzed.  Thinking that in this world, in our cities and our communities, there is no longer any room to grow, to dream,  to create, to gaze at new horizons – in a word to live – is one of the worst things that can happen to us in life, and especially at a younger age.  When ...

Dear Theo: the Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh by Irving Stone Paris , late October 1887 |  To Willemien van Gogh My dear little sister, Is the Bible enough for us? Nowadays I believe Jesus himself would again say to those who just sit melancholy,  it is not here, it is risen. Why seek ye the living among the dead? If the spoken or written word is to remain the light of the world, it’s our right and our duty to acknowledge that we live in an age in which it’s written in such a way, spoken in such a way that in order to find something as great and as good and as original, and just as capable of overturning the whole old society as in the past, we can safely compare it with the old upheaval by the Christians. For my part, I’m always glad that I’ve read the Bible better than many people nowadays, just because it gives me a certain peace that there have been such lofty ideas in the past. But precisely  because I think the old is good, I find the new a...