St. Joseph Church Parish Reflections

 

"A Christian life starts with accepting God's gift of faith with "wonder and gratitude;" but it is a journey that continues as God seeks "to transform us" to become more like Christ and share his love with others.    Only then does our faith become truly 'active through love;' only then does he abide in us" ___ Pope Benedict XVI

 


 
“Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received and communicated as an experience of grace and joy.” It is for this reason that during the Year of Faith, all Catholics are called to experience Christ’s love and to know Him better. Catholic faith, touched by this genuine encounter with the Lord, “expands our hearts in hope and enables us to bear life-giving witness” to the world. In this way, theYear of Faith is also about evangelization – sharing our faith with others. _____Pope Benedict
 
 

"Faith, if it is true, if it is real, becomes love, becomes charity, is expressed in charity. A faith without charity, without this fruit, would not be a true faith. It would be a dead faith."_____Pope Benedict XVI
 
 

 

"A Christian life starts with accepting God's gift of faith with "wonder and gratitude;" but it is a journey that continues as God seeks "to transform us" to become more like Christ and share his love with others.    Only then does our faith become truly 'active through love;' only then does he abide in us" ___ Pope Benedict XVI

 

 

Christian faith, inasmuch as it proclaims the truth of God’s total love and opens us to the power of that love, penetrates to the core of our human experience. Each of us comes to the light because of love, and each of us is called to love in order to remain in the light.   ___Pope Francis     

 


 

“Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey.”  ___ Pope Francis

 


 

 

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class. We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all. And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: We will meet one another there."  _____Pope Francis

 



"By professing the same faith, we stand firm on the same rock, we are transformed by the same Spirit of love, we radiate one light and we have a single insight into reality.  Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity. Precisely because all the articles of faith are interconnected, to deny one of them, even of those that seem least important, is tantamount to distorting the whole." _______Pope Francis 

 


 

"Saint Augustine, commenting on the account of the woman suffering from haemorrhages who touched Jesus and was cured (cf. Lk 8:45-46), says: "To touch him with our hearts: that is what it means to believe".[26] The crowd presses in on Jesus, but they do not reach him with the personal touch of faith, which apprehends the mystery that he is the Son who reveals the Father. Only when we are configured to Jesus do we receive the eyes needed to see him."  _______Pope Francis 

 


 

"The Christian can see with the eyes of Jesus and share in his mind, his filial disposition, because he or she shares in his love, which is the Spirit. In the love of Jesus, we receive in a certain way his vision." ___ Pope Francis 

 


 

"In faith, Christ is not simply the one in whom we believe, the supreme manifestation of God’s love; he is also the one with whom we are united precisely in order to believe. Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of seeing." _____ Pope Francis 

 


 

"The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being. Only by being open to and acknowledging this gift can we be transformed, experience salvation and bear good fruit. Salvation by faith means recognizing the primacy of God’s gift. As Saint Paul puts it: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (Eph 2:8)."_____  Pope Francis

 


"Without the priest, the passion and death of our Lord would be of no avail. It is the priest who continues the work of redemption here on earth...What use would be a house filled with gold, were there no one to open its door? The priest holds the key to the treasures of heaven: it is he who opens the door: he is the steward of the good Lord; the administrator of His goods...Leave a parish for twenty years without a priest and they will end by worshiping the beasts there..The priest is not a priest for himself, he is a priest for you."___  St.John Marie Vianney

 


 

"When we go before the Blessed Sacrament, let us open our heart; our good God will open His. We shall go to Him; He will come to us; the one to ask, the other to receive. It will be like a breath from one to the other." ____St.John Marie Vianney