Be Holy, Be Happy!
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #330
Surely Christ repeated the Shemà uninterruptedly
to His Father, praying that prayer of holiness throughout each day. It is a
prayer of holiness because loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, spirit,
and strength means longing for holiness, and anyone who does so is really a
saint. . . The prayer of Christ makes us confront our own prayer—how much time
do we give to it; what type is it; and what is its intensity? (Holiness)
Monday, September 29, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #329
Jesus never worked miracles for Himself,
(refusing to change stones into bread, for example, despite the apocrypha’s
assertion), but for others, yes; He gives Himself completely, unconditionally.
Thus we are called to give ourselves completely and unconditionally, too. We
are called to be people of the “yes,” without reservation and without personal
times of “untouchability.” (Holiness)
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #345
At the moment God calls me, He justifies me; at
the moment of my Baptism, He inscribes my spiritual genetic code within me.
Therefore the plan of conformation to Christ is a personal plan, not something
that is acquired by chance, but that each one brings already written in the
soul from the moment of Baptism when God puts in my soul what my abilities and
capabilities for tomorrow will be. (Holiness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #338
The harmony of faith produces love that
understands, forgives, and knows how to help. (Holiness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #328
We have to learn every virtue from Christ but,
most especially, His unconditional self-giving. Jesus gave Himself up to the
end; He gave all. He keeps nothing back, nothing for Himself, even letting His
time be consumed by His speaking. His time! Jesus has no time for Himself, so
we could say that He is a man without time and without space. (Holiness)
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #327
When we want to verify ourselves, it is
sufficient to look to the Gospels to see the life of Christ and to ask
ourselves: do my humility, charity, and generosity live up to that of Jesus? We
look to Christ’s humble, poor, and self-giving life in order to understand how
we should be. (Holiness)
Friday, September 26, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #326
Christ is holy because He is the incarnate Word
of God. Without a doubt we owe to the man Jesus our unconditional love, loving
not only with our wills but with our emotions. We must remember that He is not
simply a man but also God. He is God Who is incarnate; God Who takes a human
form. Thus in Jesus there are two natures [human and divine] but only one
Person, the divine Word. Jesus, therefore, is holy because He is the Incarnate
Word of God and because He was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit.
He has these two aspects, and both are essential even though the original
aspect [His divinity] brings us into the realm of infinity and of absolute
transcendence. (Holiness)
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #325
Holiness is not something that is bestowed
externally, that is, simply by a word from God, nor is it something that comes
from our own internal efforts. Holiness is a reality that is born through the
work of the Holy Spirit. Thus we must give the Holy Spirit space throughout our
spiritual life because it is He alone Who forms holiness in us, or more
precisely, Who forms in us the face of Christ. (Holiness)
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #353
God calls me moment by moment. Every new
day—each moment, in fact—is a new birth of the relationship between me and God
Who calls me. (Holiness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #324
As sanctifying grace is the beginning of
holiness, which is precisely grace developed to the maximum, so Christian
brotherhood is the beginning of that spiritual fraternity which is brotherhood
developed to the maximum. As we can and must speak about holiness, so we can
and must speak of spiritual brotherhood. (The Revolution of the Samaritans)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #323
Monday, September 22, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #322
We, too, are pilgrims journeying toward
eternity, toward the Father who has given us the triple, universal vocation: to
be saved, to be part of the Church, and to be holy. We are brothers and sisters
not only because we came from the Father, but also because all of us must
return to His love. And it is on such a communal return to Him that a broader
and almost boundless relationship of the fraternal tie of “pietas” is based. We
must treat each other, help each other, love each other as brothers and sisters
who together strive to reach the love of the Father. If this must be the
interior standard of spiritual life, why should it not be also for social life? (The Revolution of the Samaritans)
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #321
We are brothers because we are sons of the same
God whom we invoke “Our Father,” we are redeemed by the great Brother, Jesus
Christ, and we are all called, personally and collectively, to give a response
of total love to the Father and to Christ. Our brotherhood does not stand only
on the physical blood-relationship that flows from the first man …but also on
the uniqueness of the grace of Christ that unites us with a divine spiritual
blood. (The Revolution of the Samaritans)
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #320
It is evident that we must not only reach the
simple “animation” of the world but instead push ourselves toward the
“sacralization” of social realities. (The Revolution of the Samaritans)
Friday, September 19, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #319
There are profound ties between evangelization
and human advancement; however, it would be wrong to reduce the freedom
promoted by the Church to purely temporal dimensions. The liberation proclaimed
by evangelization must aim at the whole man, and it cannot substitute the
announcement of the kingdom for the proclamation of human freedom. It is
important and urgent to build more humane structures, but all this would serve little if
there is not conversion of heart. Moreover, the Church cannot accept a
liberation that comes from violence. (The Revolution of the Samaritans)
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #347
We need to see what virtues God wants from us on
a natural level and on a revealed level. We find them in God in the Old
Testament – patience, forbearance, forgiveness, mercy, the sense of paternity
or fatherhood, etc. – and in Christ – meekness, sweetness, "Learn from
Me because I am meek and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29), the sense of
paternity and maternity, poverty (in the cave and on the Cross), friendship,
compassion, the ability to suffer with others, love for the little ones and the
sick, unconditional self-giving, the spirit of sacrifice. (Holiness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #318
The Word chose to be born poor and in a modest
social situation, but not in order to confer spiritual privilege upon a social
class nor to teach an unnatural pauperism. He preferred such a life to help us
overcome selfishness, ambition, a yearning greed for riches, and pride, and to
present to humanity the Ideal Man, who with his fraternal love and his
altruism, is able to create a different and better world, a world of brothers
and friends. (The Revolution of the Samaritans)
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #317
Man—and this is the bottom line of the Magnificat—has
to enter into a state of humility, that is, of knowledge of God-All, and
experience his own nothingness. At the moment in which man enters into this
experience of nothingness, he exalts the experience of the God-All, and God can
act tranquilly in his soul, without the danger that man might become proud and
attribute to himself the effect of God’s work. Thus God is exalted when He has
"free rein" with man because it is through man’s nothingness that He
can act completely freely, performing great things. (The New Man)
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #316
Above all let us be focused on forming around us
(here is our specific point) well-leavened
dough, new dough capable of becoming leaven. Let us leaven people. Let
us leaven people so that they may become leavened dough; this must be our job,
I would say our ambition. And to do this we must have the courage of the truth,
the entire truth that we cannot and must not sugarcoat to make it sweeter or
more palatable. (The New Man)
Monday, September 15, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #315
The mother of God—Christ’s Mother—stood at the
foot of the Cross waiting for the death that would free humanity and,
therefore, each one of us. In that moment the Madonna becomes “the woman who
wails aloud in pain as she labored to give birth” (Revelation 12:2). It
is in suffering that Mary generates us under the Cross; it is there that her
Motherhood of co-redemption is fulfilled.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #314
From the height of the Cross, Jesus let resonate for His own and
for the entire world His “I thirst,” which did not express His need for water
but His passion for souls. For souls He suffered along the way of Calvary,
bearing afterwards the agonizing torment of the crucifixion. For souls He would
give His life; to them He addresses a heartfelt plea to not forget His gift of
love, His immense, infinite Self-giving love without measure. Christ, who could
have redeemed us with only a drop of His adorable blood, gives all, even unto
the shame of death on a Cross, because He longs for us to love Him in return.
It is the fire of love that burns in His soul and that He wants burning in our
hearts. (Racemi)
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #313
We must say that Christ, the New Man, really
presented Himself among us; He lived with us in our midst as an agonizing man,
as a man who fights. And consequently the life of the Church, of the society of
new men, cannot but be marked by this agony, in the past, today, and tomorrow. (The New Man)
Friday, September 12, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #312
Christ comes, but He comes as an agonizing
Christ who must fight. And precisely this will show us what must be
characteristic of the new man: an agonizing man, a man of combat, a man who
does not have an easy road, a comfortable journey. We find the agony of Christ
expressed, even before Gethsemane, along His whole journey. (The New Man)
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #311
It is certain that the action of the invisible
Holy Spirit is real and continuous. As Christ is encircled by this light and by
this constant, luminous cloud—the Holy Spirit present in the life and the soul
of Christ—so also are we. As long as we are in a state of grace, this reality
of the indwelling of the Spirit, that then bursts forth in our life and our
activities, is constant. As long as we are in a state of grace, the Holy Spirit
never departs from us, and He forms the new man in us. (The New Man)
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #310
The chosen people of the Old Testament are born
by an initial act of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit Who acts in the Patriarchs
(who are the forefathers of the chosen people) and Who then globally assists
the chosen people while not generating the members of the chosen people,
because they are born by natural birth. In the new Church the Holy Spirit is
not only present in the chosen people in the Church, but He Himself generates
the new members of the chosen people: we are—maybe this is a somewhat strong
expression, but try to understand it—we are the work of the Holy Spirit, we are
generated by the Holy Spirit, we are children of the Holy Spirit. (The New Man)
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #309
Jesus does not give any explanation, He speaks
only of the mysterious presence of the Spirit—we know neither where He comes
from nor where He leads. We only know that He is a mysterious presence. He is
like the wind that you can hear without knowing where it comes from or where it
leads; because the Holy Spirit takes possession of our souls and our only duty
is to close our eyes in faith and allow the Holy Spirit to lead us, I would say
that we must carry out this great act of faith in the Holy Spirit in the
decisive moments of choice. (The New Man)
Monday, September 8, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #308
What can we ask from Mary? Everything, because we are in need of
many things and she, who is our Mother, understands us. Above all we are to ask
of her one thing: that she gives us the grace to enter into the mysterious
world of love, which we can only sense through experience. Let us ask the
Madonna, for ourselves and for the others, for those who are close and those
who are far, that we may enter into this mysterious world of love: the world of
Jesus, the world of Spirit, the world of the Eucharist. (Marvelous Things
Are Said of You.)
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #307
Regarding the Church, I ask you to love much, to
pray even more, and to refrain from judging. Why? Because none of us can know
what the Holy Spirit is achieving. (The New Man)
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #306
The Church is born from the Holy Spirit; the
Church is redeemed in a certain way by the blood of Christ. According to the
interpretation of the Fathers of the Church, from the Heart of Christ, pierced
by a lance, the foundational sacraments of the Church are born, that is, the
water of Baptism and the blood of the Eucharist. (The New Man)
Friday, September 5, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #305
How has this mystery of the conception of the
eternal, uncreated Word of God in the womb of Our Lady taken place? How did she
become Mother? What was the constant assistance of the Spirit throughout the
whole period in which the Madonna carried in her womb the eternal Word of God?
All this is not ours to know; before this mystery let us be content to kneel
down and to adore, without pretending to go beyond because they are the most
sacred, highest, and most delicate mysteries we find in our faith. And let us
not be ashamed to say that we do not understand the mystery, because if we knew
the mystery, it would not be a mystery. We only know that Christ was born of
the Blessed Mother by the work of the Holy Spirit. (The New Man)
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #304
The Church is a new reality on pilgrimage that
can intone the psalm of Exodus; it is a Church that in some way suffers, it is
a Church that yearns toward, it is a Church in procession toward the final goal, toward the eschaton,
that will be reached only after time; it is a Church that is journeying toward
the Omega point that is Christ. (The New Man)
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #303
The Servant of Yahweh, in washing the feet of
the Apostles, bent over to teach us service. Service is newness and is
characteristic of the Church and of the new man. (The New Man)
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #302
We are born, we grow, and we work as new men in
the Church through the sacraments. The sacraments on one side build a new man
in us; on the other side they make us builders of new men. Therefore we are
faced with a double examination: how much have we let ourselves be built as new
men through the sacraments, and how much have we ourselves, through the
sacraments, been builders of new men, sowing newness around us? (The New Man)
Monday, September 1, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #301
The Church is the continuation of Christ; she is
the fullness of Christ. Christ is historically present through the Church and
therefore the Church continues Christ, the New Man; the Church is the
continuation of Christ in history, in time, and in space. (The New Man)
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