Are our lives truly filled with the presence of God? How many things take the place of God in my life each day?
Interpretation
This quote invites reflection on the divine presence in our daily lives and the distractions that overshadow it.
Pope Francis prompts us to contemplate the depth of our relationship with God and challenges us to consider how often we allow worldly distractions to replace our connection to the divine. He encourages self-examination regarding the sacredness of our daily experiences and the potential barriers we erect against true spiritual presence.
In practice
In a church sermon discussing faith and daily challenges.
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.
There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.
Unlike many deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shared his power with no female divinity, nor was he the divine husband or lover of any.
It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.
Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]
The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
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