A kind of breviary of reflections for each day of the year from the Pope’s various writings. Taken from the book, Co-Workers Of The Truth (Ignatius)
When Peter reaches the shore after the miraculous draft of fishes, there takes place something totally unexpected. Peter does not throw his arms around Jesus, as we might have expected, to thank him for the good catch. Instead, he falls at Jesus’ feet. He does not cling to him in order to extract the...
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When we stop to think about what the body means for us, we observe that it bears in itself a certain contradiction.
On the one hand, the body is the boundary that cuts us off from other bodies. Where this body is, there can be no other. When I am in this place, I am...
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What is a name really? And what is the point of speaking of a name of God? First, we can say that there is a fundamental difference between purpose of a concept and that of a name. The concept tries to perceive the nature of the thing as it is in itself. The name,...
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O Lord, my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot in your hands (Ps 16:5)
The background of this Psalm verse is the ancient image of the cup containing the lots for each man, and God holding these lots. Yet in this image two different conceptions about the meaning and challenge of time collide,...
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The first Christmas carol of history, which determined for all times the inner harmony of Christmas, had no human origins – Saint Luke records it as the song of the angels who were the evangelists of the holy night: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men, those with whom...
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The concern for the beauty of God’s house and the concern for the poor of God cannot be separated. Man is in need not only of what is useful but also of what is beautiful; he needs not only his own house but also the presence of God and the signs of his presence. ...
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God has become man. He has become a child. Thus he fulfills the great and mysterious promise to be Emmanuel: God-with-us. Now he is no longer unreachable for anybody. God is Emmanuel. By becoming a child, he offers is the possibility of being on familiar terms with him. I am reminded here of a...
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The Word became flesh. Alongside this Johannine truth there has to be put also the Marian truth as rendered by Luke. God has become flesh. This is not only an immensely great and remote happening, it is something very close and human. God became a child who needed a mother. He became a child,...
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Christmas beckons us to enter into God’s silence; and his mystery remains unknown to so many because they cannot find the silence in which God is active. How can we find it? Absense of words alone does not yet produce it. For a person may well remain silent outwardly, while inside he is completely...
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There is one thing that stands out on this birthday of the Light, on this entrance procession of goodness into the world, and it fills us again and again with the nagging doubt whether those great things we talk about have really happened there in the stable of Bethlehem. Look at the sun, it...
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