Faith

I.N.R.I.

Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum

Sainthood

We are all called to be saints. God expects something from each of us that no one else can do.

Love

On this earth you and I know only imperfect love. Indeed, we ourselves can give to others only a love that is broken. Love on this earth is confined and distorted and confused and manipulated. In the name of love people are used and treated as objects. The beauty of love is lost when traded for gain, prestige, advancement, and power. Yet we long to love and to be loved and to give love. And we learn to love like God.

Others

My heart is frozen without Him, but melted by His ultimate sacrifice. I am torn and weak, tired and sinful. Full of distractions and temptations, judgments and bitterness. How can I find the strength to grasp onto you, my Lord? Help me God to be concerned about the well-being of others and to practice humility, being converted and united to You.

Prayer

Day by day dear Lord three things I pray:
To see thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
Follow thee more nearly,
Day by day.

Our relationship with technology

The Holy Spirit challenges us today regarding our relationship with technology and the ongoing digital revolution. Scientific discoveries are talents entrusted to humanity so that they may bear fruit. Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate, and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude, and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.

Flourishing of humanity through limitation

Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a “limit”—incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability—tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. 

It is precisely within our limitations that the following find a place: compassion, as well as a sincere concern for the needs of others; a generosity that can emerge even in the midst of darkness and failure; spiritual experience and the worship of God. We see this at many moments when our limits become tangible: when we face rejection, when we suffer the illness or loss of a loved one, when we encounter our own weakness or failure. Mysteriously, it is precisely in such moments that we can discover a new wisdom, tangibly experience the closeness of others and encounter the presence of the Lord.

Even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering, human wisdom teaches us not to deny or suppress it, but to integrate it. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. It is only thanks to the interplay of these elements that the wonders of the soul occur within us, allowing us to sense the richness of our humanity.

To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human.