Be Holy, Be Happy!
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #300
We are born to a family, which is a social
reality—we live in a family. In general men form a physical or spiritual
family, and they live in a complex that is called society, which is a social
reality. Therefore, to speak only of the new life of the new man without also
speaking concretely of the new society is meaningless. We know that this new
society is the Church, and it is in the Church and through the Church that we
receive the message that the Father has sent us through His Christ, the New
Man, to us new men. (The New Man)
Journeying with the Founder Day #299
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit want maximum
love from us. We must respond to such infinite love with the maximum of our
possibilities, and this is what the twofold vocation to holiness and to
brotherhood encompasses. This is the new message, the new Covenant, the new
letter that the Father has sent to us to which we must be faithful. (The New Man)
Journeying with the Founder Day #298
Radicalism is absolute coherence, but absolute
coherence must be the expression of absolute love, which on our part is a
consequence of the infinite love of God for us. (The New Man)
Journeying with the Founder Day #297
If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny
himself, take up his cross daily and follow me (Lk 9:23). What is the underlying reason for this? It is the imitation
of Christ; it is a matter of following Christ, and therefore, we speak
of evangelical maximalism, the maximalism of love. It is, in fact, the
radicalism of Christ that shows us His maximum love for us, and our radicalism,
therefore, must show the Father, Christ, and the Spirit our love toward God. (The New Man)
Journeying with the Founder Day #296
We realize that it is not enough to exalt
oneself regarding the fact that we are new men, that we participate in divine
nature, that we are predestined from eternity to be saints and immaculate; instead
we must pledge ourselves because without a real commitment all this has no
value. (The New Man)
Journeying with the Founder Day #295
The love that renews is not purely human love
but the love that the Lord marks and qualifies with the words: As I have
loved you (John 13:34). This is the love that renews us because we become
new men, heirs of the new Covenant, singers of a new song. (The New Man)
Journeying with the Founder Day #294
Each one of us is an instrument of Christ; our
new life makes us become instruments of Christ. (The New Man)
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #293
It is only by contemplating the man of faith
that the man without faith can come to understand what a man of faith
possesses. (The New Man)
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #292
With the Eucharist we become body and blood with
Christ. (The New Man)
Friday, August 22, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #291
By God’s decree, man has been raised to a
participation in His divine life. Therefore, when we speak of our participation
in divine life, we are not being absurd, but we are simply repeating what the
Church teaches us and what we find in the Fathers of the Church. (The New Man)
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #290
A wonderful process of self-understanding of the
revealed truths takes place in the Church, and this teaches us much. The Spirit
acts in the Church, giving to the Church—the people of God and the Hierarchy—a
gradual understanding, always more profound, of the content of Revelation. (The New Man)
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #289
This is the mystery of the expansion of grace:
the more we love—we could use the words of John—the more the Trinity abides in
us; the more we love Christ, the more the Father loves us; the more we love the
Trinity, the more the Trinity is within us, or—if we want to quote another
version—the more we love Christ, the more the Father loves us, the more we are
immersed in the Trinity. (The New Man)
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #288
At times we think that only the sacrament of
Baptism gives us new life. This is wrong because all the sacraments conform us
to Christ. There are seven sacraments because the face of Christ—the reality of
Christ—is so complex that we cannot hope to have the whole reality of Christ in
complete form through one sacrament alone but through the various sacraments.
Therefore, each sacrament gives us a participation in the face of Christ, in
the reality of Christ. (The New Man)
Monday, August 18, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #287
We have the Trinity dwelling in us, and we are
in the heart of the Trinity. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit Who dwells in
us and works in us and prays for us and Who raises up His prayer to the Father
for us—Abba, the prayer of Christ, because we do not know how to pray. (The New Man)
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #286
It is the Body of Christ that makes us partakers
of His nature, and it is the Holy Spirit Who forms in us the mystery and the
reality of the face of Christ. When we speak of the redemptive mystery, of the
plan of salvation-holiness, we want to refer to all this, to this conformation,
to this participation in the divine life. (The New Man)
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #285
The new man is the one who has received from the
Father through Christ the incarnate and paschal reality. The new man is he who
can sing a new song. (The New Man)
Friday, August 15, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #284
The Madonna is the heart of the Church. The Holy Spirit, soul of
the Church, cannot but exalt her, starting from the beginning of the Church,
the Church of the Apostles and of the first disciples; the Church where the
Madonna has lived. The Holy Spirit could not but exalt and glorify the Mother
of the Word Incarnate. This glorification culminated when Mary was assumed into
Heaven, body and soul, through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Madonna
today—fully immersed in the Trinitarian circle, immersed in the love of the
Holy Spirit, with the love of the Holy Spirit—manifests her love to the Son and
to the Father. (Marvelous Things Are Said of You.)
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #283
We must be the singers of the praise of the
glory of God. We ourselves must be the living praise of the glory of God in
Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according
to the riches of His grace (Eph. 1:7-8). (The New Man)
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #282
Christ did not come only to save us from sin; He did not come only
to give us a good example; He came to put a new reality in us, namely, new
life. (The New Man)
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #281
Let us remember what the first followers of
Jesus were called: Christians, brothers and sisters, and saints. They were
spoken of as saints because they were called to holiness and they witnessed
holiness. They witnessed community love: cor unum et anima una (they
were of one heart and one soul). They tried a social experience based on
fraternity, even though they were unsuccessful, putting their wealth in common.
If today’s times need heroic witness, we must be ready to give it. (The Witness)
Monday, August 11, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #280
A witness is a person of prayer, of
contemplation. A witness is a person of prayer and of contemplation who longs
for perfection with an intense, interior desire that is not simply an abstract
ideal but, in a certain sense, the great, concrete ideal of one’s own life. I
could say this longing becomes interior torment. (The New Man)
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #279
A witness is a person of prayer, of
contemplation. A witness is a person of prayer and of contemplation who longs
for perfection with an intense, interior desire that is not simply an abstract
ideal but, in a certain sense, the great, concrete ideal of one’s own life. I
could say this longing becomes interior torment. (The Witness)
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #278
Certainly we are brothers and sisters, and we
have a great love for one another. Our love becomes very affectionate
especially when we are far from each other! It is a different matter when we
are near. Maximum love toward one another, though, should be constant
regardless of propinquity. This is spiritual fraternity. (The Witness)
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #277
Personal maximalism of love toward
God—holiness—is the simplest way. Clearly we speak of striving and effort, but
we must take care that an inflated emptiness isn’t what is behind our efforts.
A true, sacrificial effort should undergird our “striving” because, even if we
can deceive ourselves, the Lord knows if there is a real effort or not and if
certain attitudes are due to objective or subjective limitations that, perhaps,
we unconsciously create ourselves. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #276
The formation of conscience is not compliant
with chronological laws; it needs time, a long time. There is also an essential
element that plays a role—the action of the Spirit—and we cannot do anything
about it but pray. If the Spirit does not work within, we can accompany people
and do everything we want for many years, year after year, and then, in the
end, we will be disappointed. Thus we need to accept the reality that, in our
apostolate, results are often not apparent for a long time. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #275
Transfiguration springs forth from the mystery of
faith, not from the greatness of the person, because the person who has been
chosen for God’s mission and vocation can also be a poor person, but he has
been chosen by God. This holds true certainly for the Church, for the priests,
for anybody the Lord has chosen, called, consecrated, anointed and set aside
for Himself. Like St. Paul, the person chosen has to say: it is no longer I who
live, but it is He Who lives in me; I represent Him, therefore respect is
addressed not to me, but to Him Whom I represent, Whom I bear. (The Covenant)
Journeying with the Founder Day #274
The “Magnificat” (“My soul magnifies the
Lord”) is the testimonial song of Mary. We could say that at a certain moment
Mary is unable to contain all in her heart and explodes on an experiential
level and on a level of awe. Experiential! Only she who has had this experience
could speak of it to us; in the Magnificat the Madonna exalts the greatness and
the power of God along with her own poverty and nothingness, and therefore, she
witnesses to the All of God and to the nothingness of herself. All this is
profound awe in Mary. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #273
We have to be open to the reality of the today
and the tomorrow because it is not we, or the Holy Father, or the bishops, or
priests, or the people of God who bring the Church forward. The Church is brought
forward, toward the Omega that is Christ, by the Spirit. Behold the harmony
with the Holy Spirit and the docility to the Holy Spirit that we find in the
Church. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #272
Let us pray the Lord to make us precious stones,
saints. Do not think that this is an act
of pride; instead it is simply the answer of human love to the totality of
God’s infinite love. Thus we don’t do anything special, but we answer as Mary
did: Behold, let what the Lord wants from us be done. (The Rock)
Journeying with the Founder Day #271
Our communities should be characterized by love
for God, the call to holiness in all aspects, fullness of love, love towards
others, and spiritual brotherhood. This should not be just any love or charity,
but charity that aims at living to the maximum the criteria of the dialectic of
the maximum: spiritual brotherhood. (The Theological Community)
Journeying with the Founder Day #270
Unity of love, heart, and thought—with a
multiplicity of charisms all fused in charity—enable us to reach unity of
thought and of affection. (The Theological Community)
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