Journeying with the Founder Day #61

Man is at the center of the universe. The whole world has a reason to be; it exists and has meaning inasmuch as there is man giving meaning to it. Therefore, creatures are many steps that bring man to God; they are an external reality that give glory to God through man who is the cantor of the universe. I ask myself: why did God create man who is a spiritual and theological center of the cosmic reality? Because He loves him and because He wants man to love Him in return. (Charity)

Journeying with the Founder Day #61

Journeying with the Founder Day #60

Why did God create the world? Is it, perhaps, because He wanted to amuse Himself with the laws of gravity, or to see how the suns emit nuclear energy, or because He wanted to enjoy the moonlit nights? Why did God create? It is a mystery! The only answer to this question is love. God created as a gift of love. (Charity)

Journeying with the Founder Day #60

Journeying with the Founder Day #59

Consecrated through the sacrament of matrimony, every couple and their children are a little nucleus of a supernatural family, set in a poetic way amid the cry of a baby, the singing of the mother, the aroma of fresh bread. The parish is a family gathered around the good father at an altar adorned by white linens and flowers full of their perfume. The local Church or diocese is a family, fitted to its bishop—who knows how to be for his children a brother and a father; how to have a smile and firmness—as the strings of a harp through which the Spirit repeats the truth in melodies of love (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Eph. 4). The whole Church is a family which, in a world needing peace and love, shows itself a living reality of the Father who looks for the
far-off, lost prodigal son, as Jesus recounts in the Gospel (Lk 15:11 ff ). (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #59

Journeying with the Founder Day #58

What is the difference between us and other creatures? We, people, have the ability of loving, of responding to the love of God Who, out of love, created us precisely because He hoped that we would love Him in return. We come from God’s love. What is the aim of our journey? Where are we going? Where are we returning? We are going back to God. Think of the river: it runs toward the sea; the sea embraces it, and the river disappears in it. We go toward God Who is infinite love. The two essential points are here: the point
of departure and the point of arrival. We come from God–Love, and we return to God-Love. (Charity)

Journeying with the Founder Day #58

Journeying with the Founder Day #57

We have been created out of love, for love. There is no other possible answer: God has created us out of love; we are born from the love of God’s Heart. (Charity)

Journeying with the Founder Day #57

Journeying with the Founder Day #56

Let us try to become apostles of spiritual brotherhood in all environments, at all levels, with all means, and we will see for ourselves that the real need of today is to regain among ourselves a true, generous, complete brotherhood; and to give a profound and substantial content to our relationship with God. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #56

Journeying with the Founder Day #55

What is the mystery of Christmas if not the coming of God into time and history, Christ’s going forth from God to enter into man? This is the word that we find in the Gospel: “I came from the Father and have come into the world” (Jn 16:28). Christ, the Eternal Word, has come forth from the Father and has come into the world so that we may have the courage to come out from ourselves…At the very moment in which the Word comes forth, there is a passage from infinity to littleness. We, instead, have to come out from our littleness into the broader dimension of the world and towards our brethren who await us. I am aware that I am saying things that are very simple and ordinary, but they are strikingly true and involve our very life. Very often we are locked within ourselves, within our own selfishness, our sensibilities, our tastes, our vision, our memories, our experiences, and we do not go beyond ourselves or open ourselves to others. Evangelical radicalism can be found in this “going beyond.” Other people do not need our sadness, our poverty, or our limitations. They need to see God through us. This is maximalism! (Homily December 25, 1976)

Journeying with the Founder Day #55

Journeying with the Founder Day #54

Fr. Mike Murphy and Bishop Giaquinta

We are a family born from love, a family in which one must live with love toward the Father—live, that is, a life of holiness—a life with inner relationships that are as among brothers and sisters, and that must be regulated by love. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #54

Journeying with the Founder Day #53

Unconditional love for the Father, tenderness toward Christ crucified out of love, docility and abandonment to the Spirit’s action flooding our being, brotherhood capable of knowing humiliation and even death for one’s brothers, universal love that becomes the characteristic element of life, courage before the difficulties and persecutions found in the world, a world that must not be abandoned but sought out as the brother who must be helped to return to the Father…--this is the world of concrete and possible hope that the Risen
Christ has already revealed to us, a world that is waiting for our acceptance and our responsible cooperation to make a reality. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #53

Journeying with the Founder Day #52

We live in exceptional times, with the future holding events and problems still more extraordinary than what we face now; imperiously they ask of us a generous response, even a heroic one. Accepting these situations and trying to resolve these problems at the level of sanctity means to make oneself actually part of the world in which the mystique of love reigns. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #52

Journeying with the Founder Day #51

Utopia is thus the ideal that we must try to live with all our strength, even if we are sure that we will not realize it in a complete form because, being of God, it is infinite in scope and measure. While we can be sure, then, of never bringing about a world that is totally and universally holy, we must nevertheless strive to do so because this is the will of God. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #51

Journeying with the Founder Day #50

Speaking of “piety” and “spiritual brotherhood” does not mean being content with beautiful phrases or cultivating a pious but sterile sentiment of affection toward God and our brothers. Love, and so also holiness, is tremendously concrete and practical; it must be rooted in reality. The lives of the saints show this to us. It would be absurd to think the duty of sanctity can be left to personal and individual good will, without trying to check to see if, in fact, it can really be lived in the social context in which we are immersed. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #50

Journeying with the Founder Day #49

The first relationship of holiness is the personal one with God; we can call it the first dimension of holiness. Each of us, though, is surrounded by other persons for whom Christ died, and so they are our brothers and sisters in grace or must become so. For how could we ignore our brethren in their various situations of life? Our love for the Father must make us feel the need and duty of speaking with them of our marvelous experience of encountering the mystery of God-Love. This relationship that sanctity creates with others we call the second dimension of holiness. Can we, however, see people as isolated from the social, cultural, economic, or political situations in which they live, and speak to them of God’s love without taking into consideration their living conditions? Yet we must face the fact that most of this societal context in which we live is not only indifferent to God’s love, but most often is an obstacle to living a full response to the vocation to love Him. What this means is that we need to structure the world in such a way that these different sociological factors help us live our vocation to holiness. This last relationship we call the third dimension of holiness. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #49

Journeying with the Founder Day #48

The saint is a man of God, for Whom he feels an ever-growing need; he is a man living among men, believing with his whole heart that they are his own brothers. The saint is the masterpiece of God and of men; he is the one whom God needs and, at the same time, he manifests what God asks from all of us. The saint is the place where the divine and the human meet; he is the continuation, down through time, of redemptive love, that is, of the Word that became flesh to insert us in His process of love. For this reason, only Jesus, the God-man, is the true saint. However, after Jesus and through Jesus, all must journey towards the Father’s love; all are called to holiness. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #48

Journeying with the Founder Day #47

The saint is a person who lacks wholeness but aspires to wholeness; he is famished for a love that he already possesses but only partially. The saint is a creature in need of brothers to whom he tries to give not what is superfluous from his abundance but all that he has; he is immersed in “the today” but looks toward eternity, trying to anticipate it in the time in which he lives, according to his capabilities. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #47

Journeying with the Founder Day #46

Who is the saint? Every person who with all the sincerity and passion of which he is capable tries decisively to reach the fullness of love is a saint. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #46

Journeying with the Founder Day #45

Love is looking at the Father Who has loved us to the point of not sparing His own Son for our sake (Rm 8:32). Love is listening to the divine Word, Jesus the Incarnate Word, Who has come to reveal to us the ineffable mystery of a Father Who loves us infinitely and wants the totality of our love. Love is docility to the action of the Spirit, Who, from within us, implores the Father on high and forms—as He did in Mary—the features of the divine, and Who, from outside us, speaks to us through past Revelation and the present
Magisterium of the Church. When such love passes from theory to being incarnated in life, we call it sanctity, and the one who lives it is a saint. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #45

Journeying with the Founder Day #44

He knew our congenital and innate poverty, so He did not limit Himself to “becoming one of us” but wanted instead us to “become Him.” Baptism, the Eucharist, and the Church as His Mystical Body are three inseparable aspects of the total victory of love over sin that Christ accomplishes in us, inserting us into His reality. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #44

Journeying with the Founder Day #43

We are saints when, through the merits of Christ, we participate in His love and live a life spiritually and morally coherent with the total love that God has for us. As a consequence, sanctity consists in accepting the proposal of love that Jesus makes to us, in receiving from Him the life of grace, and thus in striving toward the maximum of perfection. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #43

Journeying with the Founder Day #42

Adam knows that he is loved; he knows that he has been created for love, and so he loves in return Him Who is the source of love. In this response of love by man toward God, it seems we can discern a marvelous and mysterious echo of Trinitarian love. Rather, one may affirm that in this repetition, this finite multiplication of the infinite Trinitarian love, the primary reason for the creation of all the cosmos and of man in particular is found. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #42

Journeying with the Founder Day #41

Creation is none other than a pale repetition of that mysterious love that indissolubly unites the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God creates out of love, that is, He communicates Himself in some way, and He wants to give to His creatures—inasmuch as they are able to receive it—His beatifying presence. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #41

Journeying with the Founder Day #40

God did not limit Himself to saving us; He made us sharers in His own divine nature. Christ did not want to pay the price of redemption (1 Cor 6:20) in a detached way, but He became one of us, our brother. Our Christian life is not merely the application of Christ’s merits as a remission for our sins, rather it is a participation in the mystery of the Trinity. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #40

Journeying with the Founder Day #38

Lord, for too long we were accustomed to thinking of Mary as a limitless reality, transcending our faculties. We might even say we thought of her as almost infinite, even if that is not so… Lord, You have taught us that it is not so. Mary is great; Mary is the Immaculate; Mary is Your mother in order to be our mother and our model of holiness. Mary’s Immaculate Conception is not meant to alienate us from her; instead it calls us closer to her so that we may reach You with her, despite our poor, meager state of holiness, of purity, and
of transparency. For this reason You remind us that today is a day of celebration, a day of joy; it is a day of trust. Lord, increase in us always this love for Mary, mother and model of our holiness (Homily December 8th, 1987).

Journeying with the Founder Day #38

Journeying with the Founder Day #39

God does not haggle; He gives with infinite abundance. Christ does not give us a little something; He consumes Himself utterly. The love God wants from us is not according to the law of the least indispensable but according to the principle of “the all.” The brotherhood we must have among ourselves is not measured by justice but by the immolation that Christ chose in order to manifest His love for us. (Love is Revolution)

Journeying with the Founder Day #39

Journeying with the Founder December 8th 2013

The Immaculate Conception
Lord, for too long we were accustomed to thinking of Mary
as a limitless reality, transcending our faculties. We might
even say we thought of her as almost infinite, even if that is
not so… Lord, You have taught us that it is not so. Mary is
great; Mary is the Immaculate; Mary is Your mother in order
to be our mother and our model of holiness. Mary’s Immaculate
Conception is not meant to alienate us from her;
instead it calls us closer to her so that we may reach You with
her, despite our poor, meager state of holiness, of purity, and
of transparency. For this reason You remind us that today
is a day of celebration, a day of joy; it is a day of trust. Lord,
increase in us always this love for Mary, mother and model
of our holiness (Homily December 8th, 1987).

Journeying with the Founder December 8th 2013

Journeying with the Founder Day #37

Christ’s Heart is manifested as a spousal Heart, as a Heart that loves immensely, as a Heart of great desire. It is in this context that we can understand how at the Last Supper the Lord allows John to rest his head on His Heart, and how He can call the Apostles His friends; in fact He calls them “My little children,” “My little ones." (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #37

Journeying with the Founder Day #36

Every time that a person approaches us we have to ask ourselves: has this person secured his covenant of total love with God? When we enter into an environment we must ask ourselves: has this environment secured its covenant of total love with God? However, it is not enough to ask oneself this question in general; it is fitting to ask oneself in what way is it possible to help the person and the environment embrace their own covenant with God, that is, through what means and ways can this be done? (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #36

Journeying with the Founder Day #35

Each one of us is simultaneously a bearer and thus a supervisor and a builder of at least a dual covenant: one that is both personal and collective. No one can lock himself up in his own covenant, in his own interiority, in his own personal spirituality, neglecting the fact that others near him may or may not live the same covenant. We are one family. (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #35

Journeying with the Founder Day #34

The infinite prospect for what is beyond places us in a situation of interior tension through which we look at today’s reality and give of ourselves today but with the certainty that today is only the eve of the eternal tomorrow. This eve already has a reality of intimacy, of concreteness, of friendship and of profound love: it is life in the Spirit, life of the foursome that is within us: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the “I.” (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #34

Journeying with the Founder Day #33

Each person must be able to say: I am a person who has been transformed; I am somebody who has been called by Christ; I have to secure or renew my covenant with Christ, to live the law that He gives me, that is, all that He wants from me. Certainly this is a personal issue, but a community one, too. Each community of any type (family, religious, or a group), must reflect together on how to live its own covenant with Christ in a concrete way. (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #33

Journeying with the Founder Day #32

God takes man’s fidelity seriously and builds history on it. Think of Mary’s Fiat on which history has been built: the history of the new covenant starts with Mary’s Fiat, her “yes,” her “Amen—may it be so.” Think of the “Amen” at Gethsemane: Father, may this chalice pass away from me; yet not my will, but Yours be done (Mt 26:39). Think of the Apostles’ response. They are called, they say their Amen and it is on their Amen that God builds the history of the Church. Think of our sacramental Amen as Christians, and then as consecrated people, on which God wants to build the history of our time. Think of our personal responsibility
in whether this history is built or not. The personal, little Amen of each person has an essential importance, not a relative one, inasmuch as the various “Amens” together form the necessary condition, the supporting pillar, for the building up of today’s history. (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #32

Journeying with the Founder Day #31

Christ suffered for us, giving us an example so that we could follow in His footsteps. As Christ led a life of oblation to the Father and His brothers and sisters, and did not look after Himself but emptied Himself and denied Himself, in the same way he who wants to follow Him as a disciple must take up his cross every day and deny himself. This is Christianity. (The Covenant)

Journeying with the Founder Day #31