Journeying with the Founder Day #345

All our life is studded with the presence of Christ and the help that He gives us through His sacraments. It is Christ, present in us through His sacraments, Who creates and realizes the plan of holiness; the Holy One sanctifies us through the sacraments in every moment of life. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #345

Journeying with the Founder Day #344

Jesus has not called us to sadness. Christ, who has the beatific vision and therefore has the fullness of joy, calls us to joy. “The exaltation of Christ be with you,” and may your joy be full! (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #344

Journeying with the Founder Day #343

Without the Lord Jesus we can do nothing; the more we are united to Jesus Christ, the more fruit we will bear. The less united we are to Christ, the less fruit we will produce. When we do not bear fruit, it means that we are not with Christ Jesus. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #343

Journeying with the Founder Day #342

Christ is the mediator, the builder of a bridge to the Father, “pontem facit, “He who builds the bridge,” the “Pontifex.” Through Christ, mediator and pontiff, we reach the Trinity, the Father, the Spirit, and therefore we reach the Church. This is not a meaningless moral and spiritual insertion, but real and vital as expressed in the fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower. Every branch that does not bear fruit, He removes, and the branch that produces fruit He prunes so it produces more fruit.” (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #342

Journeying with the Founder Day #341

It is important to be familiar with the saints, our brothers and sisters who have walked the same roads before us, who have traveled in situations like ours and were able to become holy, perhaps in a hidden life of simplicity, without grand things, without even being noticed. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #341

Journeying with the Founder Day #340

The saints are the wealth of the Church. They shape the history of the Church because a saint, moved by the Holy Spirit, is humanity’s prayer to God, and at the same time is the answer of the Holy Spirit to humanity. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #340

Journeying with the Founder Day #339

Love, sacrifice, and prayer for priests are part of the economy of love in the Mystical Body. If I am a saint, I have a greater capacity to intercede for others, and if I am not a saint, something is lacking in the Body of Christ: my merits, my holiness, my participation in the passion of Christ spoken of by St. Paul. “In my body I complete what is lacking in the passion of Christ on behalf of His body, that is, the Church” (Col 1:24). (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #339

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 #338

Journeying with the Founder Day #337

The Magisterium of the Church is another “means of holiness” because who of us can trust himself so much as to be certain about truth or error? We see the many changes we ourselves undertook in the past, how much ignorance there is in the world about the faith, and how many terrible deficiencies! How can we venture into the ocean of God’s mind or think that we understand Revelation perfectly when we see that many very intelligent people, some geniuses even, have failed down through the centuries?  Thus we need an attitude of humility toward the Magisterium. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #337

Journeying with the Founder Day #336

I become a child of the Father, a brother of Christ, God’s heir, a co-heir with Christ, and therefore I acquire the right to turn to God, in a way like Christ, and to call Him ‘Abba’, sweet Father.  Here is what grace is: a created reality that comes from the Heart of God. The Father gives grace because Christ has gained it for us by dying on the cross, and the Holy Spirit gives it concretely to our souls in order to transform us in Christ.  For this reason we speak of sanctifying grace because it sanctifies us or sets us apart for the holiness of God; makes us similar to Him, detached from evil and sin; and, therefore, gives us moral holiness. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #336

Journeying with the Founder Day #335

Do we love Scripture? Do we deepen our love for it? What part does it have in our lives? We must remember that Scripture has a sacramental strength in the sense that the Word of God, in and of itself, is operative in the soul; it is, thus, a bearer of grace. The Gospel that we proclaim, the other Mass readings, and the Psalms that we recite in the Liturgy of the Hours are realities full of grace. They bring grace to the soul if it [the soul] is open to that grace, to its light, and to the interior impulses that, at times, can be intuitions, sometimes intuitions of sweetness, but that are always actual graces reaching us through Scripture. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #335

Journeying with the Founder Day #334

The Church is Christ living in time. In the Church Christ has deposited all the riches of His Heart, so outside the Church these riches are found only in reduced form, or they are not found at all. The Church could be called the great reservoir of the love of God, the treasury of His Heart, containing the wealth of wisdom and science which constitute the means for holiness, which is the fullness of love. (Holiness)

Journeying with the Founder Day #334

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)

Journeying with the Founder Day #333

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.

Journeying with the Founder Day #332

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)

Journeying with the Founder Day #331

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)

Journeying with the Founder Day #330

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)

Journeying with the Founder Day #329

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 #345

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 #338

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)

Journeying with the Founder Day #328