Daily Thought

  Be A Builder of Hope Dear brother Bishops, dear priests and deacons, consecrated men and women, seminarians and pastoral workers, good evening! I thank Bishop Poisson for his words of welcome and I greet all of you, especially those who had to travel a long way to get here.  The distances in your country are truly large!  Thank you!  I am happy to be here with you! It is significant that we find ourselves in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec, the Cathedral of this particular Church and primatial see of Canada, whose first Bishop, Saint François de Laval, opened the Seminary in 1663 and devoted his entire ministry to the formation of priests.  The brief reading that we have heard spoke to us about the “elders”, that is the presbyters.  Saint Peter urged us: “Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly” ( 1 Pt  5:2).  Gathered here as the People of God, let us remember that Jesus is the Shepherd of our lives, who ...

  More Than Victors! Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.  For he says:           “In an acceptable time I heard you,           and on the day of salvation I helped you.”  Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We cause no one to stumble in anything, in order that no fault may be found with our ministry;  on the contrary, in everything we commend ourselves as ministers of God, through much endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints,  beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts;  by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in a holy spirit, in unfeigned love,  in truthful speech, in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left;  through glory and dishonor, insult and praise. We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful;  as unrecognized and yet acknowled...

 A Truth To Remember Throughout The Day Have patience with all things - but first with yourself. Never confuse your mistakes with your value as a human being. You are a perfectly valuable, creative, worthwhile person simply because you exist. And no amount of triumphs or tribulations can ever change that. St. Francis de Sales

  We Are Not Redeemed By Science It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love. This applies even in terms of this present world. When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of “redemption” which gives a new meaning to his life. But soon he will also realize that the love bestowed upon him cannot by itself resolve the question of his life. It is a love that remains fragile. It can be destroyed by death. The human being needs unconditional love. He needs the certainty which makes him say: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39). If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then—only then—is man “redeemed”, whatever should happen to him in his particular circumstances. This is what it means to say: Jesus Chris...

  Much of Our World Today?  People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. Aldous Huxley

  So Many Opportunities! You must realise now, more clearly than ever, that God is calling you to serve Him in and from the ordinary, secular and civil activities of human life. He waits for us everyday, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. St. Josemaría Escrivá

  Encouraging Words To Help Us Try to commit yourself to a plan of life and to keep to it: a few minutes of mental prayer, Holy Mass — daily, if you can manage it — and frequent Communion; regular recourse to the Holy Sacrament of Forgiveness — even though your conscience does not accuse you of mortal sin; visiting Jesus in the Tabernacle; praying and contemplating the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and so many other marvellous devotions you know or can learn. You should not let them become rigid rules, or water‑tight compartments. They should be flexible, to help you on your journey you who live in the middle of the world, with a life of hard professional work and social ties and obligations which you should not neglect, because in them your conversation with God still continues. Your plan of life ought to be like a rubber glove which fits the hand perfectly. Please don’t forget that the important thing does not lie in doing many things; limit yourself, generously, to those you can...

  Choosing The Better Part Martha and Mary are two sisters; they also have a brother, Lazarus, but he does not appear on this occasion. Jesus is passing through their village and, the text says, Martha received him at her home (cf. 10: 38). This detail enables us to understand that Martha is the elder of the two, the one in charge of the house. Indeed, when Jesus has been made comfortable, Mary sits at his feet and listens to him while Martha is totally absorbed by her many tasks, certainly due to the special Guest.  We seem to see the scene: one sister bustling about busily and the other, as it were, enraptured by the presence of the Teacher and by his words. A little later Martha, who is evidently resentful, can no longer resist and complains, even feeling that she has a right to criticize Jesus: "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me". Martha would even like to teach the Teacher! Jesus on the other hand answers her very c...

  Focus I will go anywhere and do anything in order to communicate the love of Jesus to those who do not know Him or have forgotten Him. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

Rest in God! Although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. (Matthew 11:25) Think about the amazing advancements in technology that have come about in the past century. Computers that once took up entire rooms now fit on your wrist. People once doomed to die from horrible diseases now go on to live for many happy and healthy years. Airplanes and high-speed trains have made the globe much smaller. And yet the same problems that have dogged us for centuries—poverty, war, crime, abuse—are still around. Why can’t all this incredible knowledge help us tackle these issues? The problem is that technology cannot reveal the most important truth of all: that we are all children of God. Those whom Jesus calls “the wise and the learned”—the ones who rely only on brainpower—can’t quite understand this (Matthew 11:25). They can surmise that there is a God, but only God can reveal himself to us. For that to happen, they have to be “childli...

  Resting in God's Heart The holy Gospel relates that after the apostles first went out on their apostolic mission, Jesus said to them: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31). The Gospel tells us nothing of how they took that rest, but we can easily conjecture what peace, love, and happiness that secret, intimate retreat with Jesus must have held for them. On some occasions in life, God approaches the soul and speaks similar words, inviting it with immense tenderness to rest sweetly within his divine heart and—dare I say it?—asking it to allow him to rest in it. Heaven is complete rest in God, because earth is always a place of labor, vicissitudes, and sorrow. The soul sighs to be freed from the anxieties of this life, as Saint Paul desired: “… [M]y desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Phil 1:23). But God, the divine friend, is pleased to grant to souls that love him an experience of beatitude on this earth, in the heaven of his heart—is no...

 Proclaim The Greatness of the Lord! Dear Brothers and Sisters, In our continuing catechesis on Christian prayer, we now turn to Psalm 126. This Psalm is a joyful prayer of thanksgiving for God’s fidelity to his promises in bringing about Israel’s return from the Babylonian Exile: “The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced” (v. 3). A similar spirit of joy and thanksgiving should mark our own prayer as we recall the care which God has shown to us in the events of our lives, even those which seem dark and bitter. The Psalmist implores God to continue to grant Israel his saving help: “May those who sow in tears, reap with shouts of joy” (v. 5). This imagery of the seed which silently grows to maturity reminds us that God’s salvation is at once a gift already received and the object of our hope, a promise whose fulfilment remains in the future. Jesus will use this same imagery to express the passage from death to life, from darkness to light, which must take place in the l...