Be Holy, Be Happy!
Friday, October 3, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #333
The plan of holiness, brought about by Jesus
through His message and example, has been given completely to the Church so
that the Church could realize or actualize it. The Church, however, is not an
abstract entity. This is the Church of which Jesus said, “You are Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18)—that is, the hierarchical
Church (Pope, Apostles, bishops, priests) and then all the people of God.
Therefore the plan of holiness begun by Jesus must be continued by the
Church—all of us, the hierarchy and all of us. (Holiness)
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #332
In His final moment on the cross, Jesus says,
“Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 2:46), teaching us to abandon
ourselves to the Father and to love our neighbor.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #331
Jesus served others without considering it or
them a burden. The defining ultimate gesture—the washing of the feet—is
exceptional as a gesture, but it is certainly not exceptional as an expression
of His inner life. Christ was and continues to be the Servant of the Father,
that is, He who is completely given and available to the Father for His
brothers. Therefore He is the servant of His brothers, too, because He is
completely given and available to them. This is true of every brother because
when Jesus washed the Apostles’ feet, Judas was there. (Holiness)
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)
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)
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #269
Our witness of Christ must be founded on a
personal experience of Him. Thus we must ask ourselves if every contact we have
with the Lord, especially through the sacraments, is an experience of Him; if
every prayer we offer is an experience of Him. Without being aware of Him,
there is the danger that our testimony will only be about things we have read,
listened to, or heard rather than a testimony coming from a profound,
life-giving relationship with Christ, Who then becomes the reality we give
witness to. (The Witness)
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #268
I do not know if the witness of words and works
is always most necessary or if sometimes—perhaps many times—what is most
necessary is a discreet, almost unnoticed but real presence of persons who give
witness to Christ with their prayer, gentleness, and example, helping others
grow in Christ’s likeness. (The Witness)
Monday, July 28, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #267
The Father has loved Christ, His Incarnate
Eternal Word; He has witnessed that Christ is His beloved Son, and that we must
listen to and follow Him. Let us pause a moment and ask ourselves: to what
extent have we accepted the Father’s witness in our life? What place does
Christ truly have in our life, not just verbally but truly? What have we done
to be an echo of the Father’s witness? (The Witness)
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #266
Christ is the Icon written by the Incarnated
Word in Mary’s womb. However, we—and this is an Oriental thought—prefer to use
another expression that is also true: Christ is the Icon written by the Holy Spirit in the Immaculate’s womb. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #265
Many times we have to have the courage to face
the risk of failure… The courage to risk! A courage based on prayer,
perseverance, and effort. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #264
Many times we have to have the courage to face
the risk of failure… The courage to risk! A courage based on prayer,
perseverance, and effort. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #263
As we often read in a beautiful antiphon of
Vespers, Christ has to become the heart of the world. Before becoming the heart
of the world, though, He must become the heart of our life. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #262
We are each personally the temple of God, and as
a consequence, we will be the great Kingdom of God all together. This is the
principle of the New Covenant, which is not only general but personal, the
center of our life, the center of my life. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #261
Where does the certainty of our word come from?
It does not come from our studies or abilities, but from our connection with
God. The more we are united with God, the more we will have the ability to
witness the Word. (The Witness)
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #260
The specific call to the ‘word’ does not nullify
our awareness of our inability because the word is not the result of personal
ability but is only the result of the touch of the divine on the mouth of a
human creature. Therefore the weight of our humanness, the fact of being a poor
creature, remains. (The Witness)
Monday, July 21, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #259
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #258
Abraham does not doubt because he is sure that
God will keep His promise. Abraham becomes a witness of this promise; he is a
witness of God’s project that is a project of love. He knows by experience that
it is a project of love so tender that it anticipates the incarnate love of the
New Testament. (The Witness)
Journeying with the Founder Day #257
There are so many difficulties that it is not
easy to be witnesses. However, if we reflect with the simple look of
contemplation on the Father’s creative love, Christ’s presence, and the Holy
Spirit’s work, we have to take courage because I trust that in Heaven we will
find ourselves to be much more than we think based on human calculations. (The Witness)
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #256
There are so many difficulties that it is not
easy to be witnesses. However, if we reflect with the simple look of
contemplation on the Father’s creative love, Christ’s presence, and the Holy
Spirit’s work, we have to take courage because I trust that in Heaven we will
find ourselves to be much more than we think based on human calculations. (The Witness)
Friday, July 18, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #255
Let us strive to acquire a healthy sense of
optimism because there is more good around us than we think. At other events I
have often told you, “Get rid of the black glasses!” In this field, regardless
of the great evils we are experiencing and the immense evil that seems to
prevail, contemplation of the presence of the Spirit should give us great
serenity, great peace, and the certainty of tomorrow; and this certainty of
tomorrow will then give us a sense of hope. (The Witness)
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #254
Christ has been the passion of myriads of
saints, of an enormous quantity of martyrs, of little ones as well as of great
ones—Christ living in the Eucharist, but above all Christ in the reality of the
crucifixion. Think, for example, of our great mystics, of Saints Francis of
Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, Paul of the
Cross, Gemma Galgani. Through their lives these saints have been the
historical, spiritual and mystical reproduction of Christ. If you take a relic of
these persons and chemically analyze it, you will find the name of Christ. (The Witness)
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #253
Mary is for us an exemplar stone. Thus we
can and must look at Mary in our effort to become and to acquire the awareness
of being a poor stone, in the effort of living as a cornerstone, in the
sacrifice of being a stone beaten, rejected, and refined in the hope of being a
precious stone. (The Rock)
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #252
Do we make time to stop for an instant to look
at the wonders and the power of God, of this God Who surrounds us? (The Witness)
Monday, July 14, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #251
I need to be in contact with God, to listen to
His footsteps; I need to perceive Him around me, to experience that He is
present and is at work as my Father, that He surrounds me with His love and
envelops me in His embrace of love through nature. (The Witness)
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #250
We are surrounded by a marvelous reality, a
thick web of the divine; however, hastiness, challenges, and the many difficult
situations in which we find ourselves and that trouble our psyches do not allow
us to perceive and read this marvelous reality in-depth, with a contemplative
look rather than merely an intellectual or philosophical analysis. (The Witness)
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #249
“The more” springs only from a profound
experience of the divine. (The Witness)
Friday, July 11, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #248
The Church—especially at the beginning, and even
in outward manifestations—is led by the presence of the Holy Spirit. We have to
be aware of this and, therefore, we must have the courage to witness to it—to
know that we are bearers of the Spirit, to be fully aware of it, and so to be
filled with joy. (The Witness)
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #247
Do you think that bearing the cross did not cost
Christ much? Do you think that going to Calvary was an easy stroll for the
Lord? What did the chalice of blood, the chalice of suffering, and the chalice
that we experience, actually mean for Christ? The Lord took, accepted, loved,
and drank His chalice to the end! We, too, have to do God’s will in our life;
our food is to do God’s will. (The Witness)
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #246
Regardless of our discomfort and the
difficulties we may encounter, an attitude of full interior availability is
necessary, an availability that we must acquire with effort. Then, yes, we may
say that we are people who with our life and sacrifices show we believe in the
ideal to which we have consecrated ourselves and to which we give witness. (The Witness)
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #245
What do we call in common, everyday language the
awareness of the impoverished choice made by God and the awareness that the
mission entrusted to us is beyond our abilities? The name is very simple: humility—that is, the perception of our own littleness, of our own nothingness
and, therefore, referring all to God: He is all; He chooses, and He chose me. (The Witness)
Monday, July 7, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #244
Any witness, and all the more so an
extraordinary witness, must have an intimate connection with the divine. Why
don’t we start to examine ourselves on our level of connection with God? It is
a strictly personal matter that we verify. Am I united with God? What type of
relationship do I have with the Lord? How is my prayer? (The Witness)
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #243
In this law of sacramentality, we all have the
precise duty to become not simply a remembrance, a memory, or a reality that
contains the mystery of God, but rather a prophetic explosion of this mystery. (The Witness)
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #242
Each one of us is chosen by God to become a
prophet, to become word like John who was a voice, a word. Each one of us, just
because we are inserted in the sacramental mystery, must become word. We cannot
hide this richness within ourselves that God has given us. When we speak of the
apostolate, we speak fundamentally of prophecy, of the word that is within us,
that nestles within us, the mystery that is effective in us and that we must
project outside ourselves. (The Witness)
Friday, July 4, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #241
Let us ask ourselves with simplicity and
humility how many of us—myself included—during the Mass, though remaining very
attentive during the celebration, call to mind the double reality of Calvary
and of the Cenacle that takes place. (The Witness)
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #240
Is there a discrepancy between our speaking and
the vital reality of our being, between what we say—what we “chat about”—and
the way we live? I assure you, it is not difficult to speak; having natural
talent and a little practice is enough to become the best speakers… You could
speak much better than I, but this is not important. Knowing how to speak isn’t
what matters, but what is behind the words; if there is involvement of life
there is witness. (The Witness)
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #239
It is God who works through us, not we who work:
this is the humility that we must have when we carry out the apostolate. (The Witness)
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Journeying with the Founder Day #238
If we know that all comes from God, then we have
to be aware of it, and our witness will have meaning as long as it is God Who
works through our witness…To have the awareness that only the Lord can make our
work fruitful; to have a sense of humility and not an excessive trust in
technical means, almost carrying out the apostolate as if we were running a
business or industry, as if the apostle were a manager, as if with the
technical means of spreading that we now have, we would be able to solve all
the problems. (The Witness)
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