Quote of the Day

"If we want to understand the Lord's mysterious words, we must read them in light of Isaiah, whom he cites, and we must read them in light of his own path, the outcome of which he already knows. In saying these words, Jesus places himself in the line of the Prophets--his destiny is a prophet's destiny... Prophets fail: Their message goes too much against general opinion and the comfortable habits of life. It is only through failure that their word becomes efficacious. This failure of the Prophets is an obscure question mark hanging over the whole history of Israel, and in a certain way it constantly recurs in the history of humanity. Above all, it is also again and again the history of Jesus Christ: He ends up on the Cross. But that very Cross is the source of great fruitfulness."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part One: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (Doubleday, 2007), pp. 189--190

Reflection for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

"The strength of the unceasing prayer of the Church rises to God and the Lord listens and performs an unheard of and unexpected deliverance, sending his Angel.

"The account reminds us of the great elements during Israel’s deliverance from captivity in Egypt, the Hebrew Passover. As happened in that major event, here also, the Angel of the Lord performs the primary action that frees Peter. And the actions of the Apostle — who is asked to rise quickly, put on his belt and gird his loins — repeating those of the Chosen People on the night of their deliverance through God’s intervention, when they were invited to eat the lamb quickly with their belts fastened, sandals on their feet, and their staffs in their hands, ready to leave the country (cf. Ex. 12:11). Thus, Peter could exclaim: “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his Angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod” (Acts 12:11). The Angel does not only recall the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, but also the Resurrection of Christ. Recounted in the Acts of the Apostles: “and behold, an Angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter on the side and woke him” (Acts 12:7). The light that fills the prison cell, the same action to awaken the Apostle, refers to the liberating light of the Passover of the Lord that triumphs over the darkness of night and evil. Finally, the invitation to “Wrap your mantle around you and follow me” (Acts 12:8) echoes the words of the initial call of Jesus in our hearts (cf. Mk. 1:17), repeated after the Resurrection on Lake Tiberias, where on two occasions the Lord says to Peter, “Follow me” (Jn. 21:19,22). It is a pressing call to follow him. Only by coming out of ourselves to walk with the Lord and by doing his will can we live in true freedom."

--Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, May 9, 2012

Reflection for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

"The cloud reminds us of the hour of the Transfiguration, in which the bright cloud falls on Jesus and the disciples. It reminds us of the hour of Mary's encounter with God's messenger, Gabriel, who announces to her the 'overshadowing' with the power of the Most High. It reminds us of the holy tent of God in the Old Covenant, where the cloud signified the Lord's presence, the same Lord who, in the form of a cloud, led the people of Israel during their journey through the desert. This reference to the cloud is unambiguously theological language. It presents Jesus' departure, not as a journey to the stars, but as his entry into the mystery of God. It evokes an entirely different order of magnitude, a different dimension of being."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part Two: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press, 2011), p. 282

Quote of the Day

"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason. And because it is Reason, it also created freedom; and because freedom can be abused, there also exist forces harmful to creation. Hence a thick black line, so to speak, has been drawn across the structure of the universe and across the nature of man. But despite this contradiction, creation itself remains good, life remains good, because at the beginning is good Reason, God’s creative love. Hence the world can be saved. Hence we can and must place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and love – on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, April 23, 2011

Quote of the Day

"In this immersion of God in human suffering and in the abyss of evil lies the root of our justification. The 'return to God with all your heart' in our Lenten journey passes through the cross, following Christ on the road to Calvary, the total gift of self. It is a way on which to learn every day to come out more and more from our selfishness and our closures, to make room for God who opens and transforms the heart. And Saint Paul recalls how the announcement of the Cross resounds to us through the preaching of the Word... it is a call for us to make this Lenten journey characterized by a more careful and assiduous listening to the Word of God, the light that illuminates our steps."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, February 13, 2013

Reflection for the Octave of Christmas

"Jesus was born during a 'census of the whole world' ordered by Caesar Augustus, the emperor renowned for bringing the Pax Romana to all the lands under Roman rule. Yet this infant, born in an obscure and far-flung corner of the empire, was to offer the world a far greater peace, truly universal in scope and transcending all limitations of space and time.

"Jesus is presented to us as King David’s heir, but the liberation he brought to his people was not about holding hostile armies at bay; it was about conquering sin and death forever.

"The birth of Christ challenges us to reassess our priorities, our values, our very way of life. While Christmas is undoubtedly a time of great joy, it is also an occasion for deep reflection, even an examination of conscience...

"Christmas can be the time in which we learn to read the Gospel, to get to know Jesus not only as the child in the manger, but as the one in whom we recognize God made man. It is in the Gospel that Christians find inspiration for their daily lives and their involvement in worldly affairs – be it in the Houses of Parliament or the stock exchange....

"In Italy, many crib scenes feature the ruins of ancient Roman buildings in the background. This shows that the birth of the child Jesus marks the end of the old order, the pagan world, in which Caesar’s claims went virtually unchallenged. Now there is a new king, who relies not on the force of arms, but on the power of love.

"He brings hope to all those who, like himself, live on the margins of society. He brings hope to all who are vulnerable to the changing fortunes of a precarious world. From the manger, Christ calls us to live as citizens of his heavenly kingdom, a kingdom that all people of goodwill can help to build here on earth."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Financial Times, December 20, 2012

Reflection for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

"In the crucified Jesus the divinity is disfigured, stripped of all visible glory and yet is present and real. Faith alone can recognize it: the faith of Mary, who places in her heart too this last scene in the mosaic of her Son's life. She does not yet see the whole, but continues to trust in God, repeating once again with the same abandonment: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord” (cf. Lk 1:38).

"Then there is the faith of the Good Thief: a faith barely outlined but sufficient to assure him salvation: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” . This “with me” is crucial. Yes, it is this that saves him. Of course, the good thief is on the cross like Jesus, but above all he is on the Cross with Jesus. And, unlike the other evildoer and all those who taunt him, he does not ask Jesus to come done from the Cross nor to make him come down. Instead he says: “remember me when you come into your kingdom”.

"The Good Thief sees Jesus on the Cross, disfigured and unrecognizable and yet he entrusts himself to him as to a king, indeed as to the King. The good thief believes what was written on the tablet over Jesus' head: “The King of the Jews”. He believed and entrusted himself. For this reason he was already, immediately, in the “today” of God, in Paradise, because Paradise is this: being with Jesus, being with God."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, November 21, 2010

Reflection for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

"God is the true wisdom that never ages, the authentic wealth that never corrupts, the happiness to which every man aspires in the depths of his heart. This truth, that passes through the Wisdom Books and re-emerges in the New Testament, comes to fulfillment in the existence and teaching of Jesus. In the perspective of Gospel wisdom, death itself is the bearer of a healthy teaching because it forces us to look reality in the face; it pushes us to recognize the transience of that which appears great and strong in the eyes of the world. In the face of death every reason for human pride vanishes and instead what seriously matters comes to the fore. Everything comes to an end, every one of us is passing through this world. Only God has life in himself; he is life. Ours is a life of participation, given ab alio, thus a man can gain eternal life only because of the particular relationship that the Creator himself has established with him. But God, on seeing man distancing himself from him, made a further step, he created a new relation between himself and us, of which today's Second Reading speaks. He, Christ, 'laid down his life for us' (1 Jn. 3:16)."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, November 3, 2008

Quote of the Day

"When he [Jesus] says he has manifested God's name and that he will manifest it further, he is not speaking of some new word that he has communicated to men as a particularly felicitious designation for God. The revelation of the name is a new mode of God's presence among men, a radically new way in which God makes his home with them. In Jesus, God gives himself entirely into the world of mankind: whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (cf. Jn. 14:9)."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part Two: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press, 2011), pp. 91--92

Reflection for Holy Week

"According to rabbinic theology, the idea of the covenant--the idea of establishing a holy people to be an interlocutor for God in union with him--is prior to the idea of the creation of the world and supplies its inner motive. The cosmos was created, not that there might be manifold things in heaven and earth, but that there might be a space for the 'covenant', for the loving 'yes' between God and his human respondent. Each year the Feast of Atonement restores this harmony, this inner meaning of the world that is constantly disrupted by sin, and it therefore marks the high point of the [Jewish] liturgical year....

"Jesus' prayer [at the Last Supper] manifests him as the high priest of the Day of Atonement. His Cross and his exaltation is the Day of Atonement for the world, in which the whole of world history--in the face of all human sin and its destructive consequences--finds its meaning and is aligned with its true purpose and destiny."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press, 2011), pp. 78--79

Quote of the Day

"Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility…Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 17

Reflection for Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God

"In Christ, God has truly come into the world, he has entered into our history, he has set his dwelling among us, thus fulfilling the deepest desire of human beings that the world may truly become a home worthy of humanity. On the other hand, when God is put aside, the world becomes an inhospitable place for man, and frustrates creation’s true vocation to be a space for the covenant, for the 'Yes' to the love between God and humanity who responds to him. Mary did so as the first fruit of believers with her unreserved 'Yes' to the Lord....

"Dear brothers and sisters, today we praise the Most Holy Virgin for her faith, and with Saint Elizabeth we too say, 'Blessed is she who believed' (Luke 1:45). As Saint Augustine said, Mary conceived Christ by faith in her heart before she conceived him physically in her womb; Mary believed and what she believed was came to be in her (cf. Sermon 215, 4: PL 38, 1074). Let us ask the Lord to strengthen our faith, to make it active and fruitful in love. Let us implore him that, like her, we may welcome the word of God into our hearts, and carry it out with docility and constancy."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, March 27, 2012

Quote of the Day

"Mary is so interwoven in the great mystery of the Church that she and the Church are inseparable, just as she and Christ are inseparable. Mary mirrors the Church, anticipates the Church in her person, and in all the turbulence that affects the suffering, struggling Church she always remains the Star of salvation."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, December 8, 2005

Quote of the Day

"For many people today, practical atheism is the normal rule of life. Maybe there is something or someone, they think, who once set the world in motion eons ago, but he does not matter to us at all. If this attitude becomes a general existential position, then freedom no longer has any standards, then everything is possible and permissible. That is why it is so urgent also to bring the question about God back into the center. Of course, this does not mean a God who exists in some way or other, but rather a God who knows us, speaks to us, and approaches us--and who is then our judge also."

--Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (Ignatius Press, 2010), p. 49

Reflection for the Octave of Easter

"Indeed, matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal. From now on, as Tertullian once said, 'spirit and blood' have a place within God. Even if man by his nature is created for immortality, it is only now that the place exists in which his immortal soul can find its 'space', its 'bodiliness', in which immortality takes on its meaning as communion with God and with the whole of reconciled mankind. This is what is meant by those passages in Saint Paul's prison letters that speak of the cosmic body of Christ, indicating thereby that Christ's transformed body is also the place where men enter into communion with God and with one another and are thus able to live definitively in the fullness of indestructible life. Since we ourselves have no experience of such a renewed and transformed kind of life, it is not surprising that it oversteps the boundaries of what we are able to conceive."

--Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part Two: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press, 2011), p. 274

Reflection for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

“'A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel'” (Luke 2:32). With these words Simeon describes the Messiah of the Lord, at the end of his hymn of blessing. The topic of light, that reechoes the first and second songs of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah (cf. Is 42:6; 49:6), is vividly present in this liturgy. It was in fact opened by an evocative procession, in which the Superiors and General Superiors of the Institutes of consecrated life represented here took part and carried lit candles. This sign, specific to the liturgical tradition of this Feast, is deeply expressive. It shows the beauty and value of the consecrated life as a reflection of Christ’s light; a sign that recalls Mary’s entry into the Temple. The Virgin Mary, the Consecrated Woman par excellence, carried in her arms the Light himself, the Incarnate Word who came to dispel the darkness of the world with God’s love."

--Benedict XVI, Homily, February 2, 2013

Reflection for Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

"In the ancient Near East, in royal inscriptions from both Sumer and the area of Babylonia and Assyria, the king refers to himself as the shepherd instituted by God. 'Pasturing sheep' is an image of his task as a ruler. This image implies that caring for the weak is one of the tasks of the just ruler. One could therefore say that, in view of its origins, this image of Christ the Good Shepherd is a Gospel of Christ the King, an image that sheds light upon the kingship of Christ.

"Of course, the immediate precedents for Jesus' use of this image are found in the Old Testament, where God himself appears as the Shepherd of Israel. This image deeply shaped Israel's piety, and it was especially in times of need that Israel found a word of consolation and confidence in it. Probably the most beautiful expression of this trustful devotion is Psalm 23... The image of God as Shepherd is more fully developed in chapters 34--37 of Ezekiel, whose vision is brought into the present and interpreted as a prophecy of Jesus' ministry both in the Synoptic shepherd parables and in the Johannine shepherd discourse. Faced with the self-seeking shepherds of his own day, whom he challenges and accuses, Ezekiel proclaims the promise that God himself will seek out his sheep and care for them."

--Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part One: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), pp. 272--273

Reflection for the Solemnity of All Saints

"The liturgy invites us to share in the heavenly jubilation of the Saints, to taste their joy. The Saints are not a small caste of chosen souls but an innumerable crowd to which the liturgy urges us to raise our eyes. This multitude not only includes the officially recognized Saints, but the baptized of every epoch and nation who sought to carry out the divine will faithfully and lovingly. We are unacquainted with the faces and even the names of many of them, but with the eyes of faith we see them shine in God's firmament like glorious stars.

"Today, the Church is celebrating her dignity as 'Mother of the Saints, an image of the Eternal City' (A. Manzoni), and displays her beauty as the immaculate Bride of Christ, source and model of all holiness. She certainly does not lack contentious or even rebellious children, but it is in the Saints that she recognizes her characteristic features and precisely in them savors her deepest joy....

"This, then, is the meaning of today's Solemnity: looking at the shining example of the Saints to reawaken within us the great longing to be like them; happy to live near God, in his light, in the great family of God's friends. Being a Saint means living close to God, to live in his family. And this is the vocation of us all, vigorously reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council and solemnly proposed today for our attention."

--Benedict XVI, Homily, November 1, 2006

Quote of the Day

"Today the Church honors Our Lady of the Rosary, a liturgical Memorial that gives me the opportunity to reassert the importance of the prayer of the Rosary, so dear also to my venerable Predecessors. I commend it to you, dear young people, so that it may help you to do God's will and find in the Immaculate Heart of Mary a safe shelter. May it enable you, dear sick people, to experience the comfort of our Heavenly Mother, so that she may sustain you in moments of trial. May the recitation of this prayer be for you, dear newlyweds a daily custom in your family which, thanks to Mary's intercession will thus grow in unity and fidelity to the Gospel."

--Benedict XVI, General Audience, October 7, 2009

Quote of the Day

"I am convinced that the destruction of transcendence is actually the mutilation of man from which all the other sicknesses spring."

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), 1927--2022