God can redeem every situation

"We might not always get it right either. Even when we think we are following God’s plan—as the Jewish leaders no doubt thought—we make mistakes. But the good news is that whether we meant to turn away from God or not, he has a way of using even our mistakes and failings for good. So when we slip up, we shouldn’t think that all is lost. God can redeem every situation, as well as every person!

What a comforting thought to take with us when we get caught up worrying about past missteps! And let it be a reminder to help us look at everyone as God does: not perfect, but still a part of his plan, still having the potential to do great things for him. His mercy should be both an encouragement and an example for us!"

From "The Word Among Us", October 31, 2015

The true score card

"My forty-year goal ... was to be a part of a movement, maybe even a revolution, where we start to have a score card other than just making money. We start to think about what's the purpose of our lives and how we're gonna fulfil that at work, and actually we measure ourselves based on the impact we have on others." 

(Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments)

The Church's mission

To carry out her mission in fidelity to her Master as a voice crying out in the desert, in defending faithful love and encouraging the many families which live married life as an experience which reveals of God’s love; in defending the sacredness of life, of every life; in defending the unity and indissolubility of the conjugal bond as a sign of God’s grace and of the human person’s ability to love seriously.

The Church is called to carry out her mission in truth, which is not changed by passing fads or popular opinions. The truth which protects individuals and humanity as a whole from the temptation of self-centredness and from turning fruitful love into sterile selfishness, faithful union into temporary bonds. "Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love” (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 3).

And the Church is called to carry out her mission in charity, not pointing a finger in judgment of others, but – faithful to her nature as a mother – conscious of her duty to seek out and care for hurting couples with the balm of acceptance and mercy; to be a "field hospital” with doors wide open to whoever knocks in search of help and support; even more, to reach out to others with true love, to walk with our fellow men and women who suffer, to include them and guide them to the wellspring of salvation.

A Church which teaches and defends fundamental values, while not forgetting that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27); and that Jesus also said: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17). A Church which teaches authentic love, which is capable of taking loneliness away, without neglecting her mission to be a good Samaritan to wounded humanity.

I remember when Saint John Paul II said: "Error and evil must always be condemned and opposed; but the man who falls or who errs must be understood and loved… we must love our time and help the man of our time” (John Paul II, Address to the Members of Italian Catholic Action, 30 December 1978). The Church must search out these persons, welcome and accompany them, for a Church with closed doors betrays herself and her mission, and, instead of being a bridge, becomes a roadblock: "For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb 2:11).

(Pope Francis, excerpt from his homily on the opening of the Synod on the Family, 

4 October 2015)