Ask yourselves this question: How often is Jesus inside and knocking at the door to be let out, to come out? And we do not let him out because of our own need for security, because so often we are locked into ephemeral structures that serve solely to make us slaves and not free children of God.
Interpretation
The quote encourages introspection about allowing spiritual freedom versus clinging to worldly security.
Pope Francis emphasizes the internal struggle that many face between the call of spirituality and the constraints of materialism. He suggests that Jesus represents the true freedom and liberation that individuals often suppress due to their attachment to transitory comforts, leading to a state of spiritual slavery rather than embracing one's identity as a child of God.
In practice
In a sermon about faith and freedom, one might quote this to illustrate the challenge of spiritual openness.
We are a church of sinners but we must not be afraid of holiness. Do not be afraid to aim for holiness and turn yourselves over to the love of God. Holiness does not mean performing extraordinary things but carrying out daily things in an extraordinary way that is with love, joy and faith.
I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable.
No one must say that they cannot be close to the poor because their own lifestyle demands more attention to other areas. This is an excuse commonly heard in academic, business or professional, and even ecclesial circles. While it is quite true that the essential vocation and mission of the lay faithful is to strive that earthly realities and all human activity may be transformed by the Gospel, none of us can think we are exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice
We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give.
More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.
This Christmas may we be consistent in living the Gospel, welcoming Jesus into the centre of our lives.
I think the narrative of people being caught between two cultures as immigrants is very harmful. It's exclusionary. It essentially tries to argue that some Americans are more real than others.
To never think about race means that it doesn't really shape your life, or more specifically, the race that you have is not a burden to you.
The foolish man conceives the idea of 'self.' The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of 'self;' thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.
Near the gates and within two cities there will be scourges the like of which was never seen: famine within plague, people put out by steel, crying to the great immortal God for relief.
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,_x000D_ _x000D_ The seasons' difference, as the icy fang_x000D_ _x000D_ And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,_x000D_ _x000D_ Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,_x000D_ _x000D_ Even till I shrink with cold, I smile.
I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
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