miniZibaldone

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 ...

From the homily No one could be left out in the building of that other shrine, the shrine of life, the shrine of our communities, our societies and our cultures. We are all necessary, especially those who normally do not count because they are not “up to the task” or because “they do not have the necessary funds” to build all these things. God’s Shrine is the life of his children, of everyone in whatever condition, especially of young people without a future who are exposed to endless painful and risky situations, and the elderly who are unacknowledged, forgotten and out of sight. The Shrine of God is our families in need only of the essentials to develop and progress. The Shrine of God is the faces of the many people we encounter each day…  Do not let trials and pains overwhelm you, she tells us. Today, she sends us out anew; as she did Juanito, today, she comes to tell us again: be my ambassador, the one I send to build many new shrines, accompany many lives, wipe awa...

Turn from a god of miracles to the miracle of God, which is Jesus Christ. From the angelus address This account of the Evangelist Luke is not simply the story of a fight within a community, like can sometimes happen in our neighborhoods, caused by envy and jealousies. Rather it brings to light a temptation that a religious person is always vulnerable to — all of us are vulnerable to it — and which we must decidedly avoid. What is this temptation? It is the temptation to think of religion as a human investment and consequently, to begin to “negotiate” with God, seeking our own interests. Instead, the true religion is about receiving the revelation of a God who is Father and who is concerned with each one of his creatures, also with the smallest and most significant in the eyes of man. [...] N o human condition can be a motive for exclusion — no human condition can be a motive for exclusion — from the heart of the Father, and that the only privilege in the eyes of God is that of n...