Mary shows us what love is (Pope Benedict XVI)

Pope Benedict XVI, who died today in Rome, had a great deal to say about Mary, the Mother of God, whose Feast we celebrate this weekend: 

The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them. In no one do we see this more clearly than in Mary. The words addressed by the crucified Lord to his disciple - to John and through him to all disciples of Jesus: “Behold, your mother!" (Jn 19:27) - are fulfilled anew in every generation. 

Mary has truly become the Mother of all believers. Men and women of every time and place have recourse to her motherly kindness and her virginal purity and grace, in all their needs and aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their moments of loneliness and their common endeavors… Mary, Virgin and Mother, shows us what love is and whence it draws its origin and its constantly renewed power. To her we entrust the Church and her mission in the service of love: 

Holy Mary, Mother of God, you have given the world its true light, Jesus, your Son – the Son of God. You abandoned yourself completely to God’s call and thus became a wellspring of the goodness that flows forth from him. Show us Jesus. Lead us to him. Teach us to know and love him, so that we too can become capable of true love and be fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world. 

--Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022),

Deus Caritas Est
 

Image source 1: https://www.liturgytools.net/2016/12/pictures-feast-mary-mother-of-god-adoration-of-the-shepherds-virgin-at-prayer.html
Image source 2: Antonello da Messina, Madonna and Child (15th c.), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titles_of_Mary#/media/File:Antonello_da_Messina_033.jpg
Quotation source

Mary is the model of faith (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

Mary is the model of faith.

What she did, each of us, too, 

is called upon to do, namely,

give birth to Christ in our lives. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser O.M.I.,

Facebook, August 26, 2020

Image source: https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/how-old-was-mary-when-she-had-jesus.html

To say that Mary is the Mother of God (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Today we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. St. Irenaeus says that, throughout the history of salvation, God was trying on humanity, gradually suiting divinity and humanity to one another—preparing for the Incarnation. All of that preparation was a prelude to the Israelite girl who would say yes to the invitation to be the Mother of God. 

   To say that Mary is the Mother of God is to insist on the density of the claim that God truly became human. As Fulton J. Sheen commented, Mary is like the moon, for her light is always the reflection of a higher light. 

   Catholic theology has drawn a further implication from Mary’s status as Mother of God—her role as Mother of the Church. If she is the one through whom Christ was born, and if the Church is indeed Christ’s Mystical Body, then she must be, in a very real sense, the Mother of the Church. She is the one through whom Jesus continues to be born in the hearts of those who believe. This is not to confuse her with the Savior, but it is to insist on her mission as mediator and intercessor. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

Gospel Reflection, January 1, 2022 

Image source: Fr. Richard Tomasek S.J., For Me, the Moon is Mary (1995), https://hmeenee.com/2019/08/10/the-august-moon-and-the-virgin-mary/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 1, 2023: Born of a woman...

Born of a woman...

What a blessing!

    We celebrate this weekend the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Theotokos, Holy Mother of God, whom St. Elizabeth called blessed among women (Luke 1:42). As we learn from the priestly blessing described in the Book of Numbers, to be blessed is to know that the Lord lets his face shine upon you and is gracious to you. Mary, full of grace, was certainly blessed by God; because of such a blessing, Psalm 67 suggests, God’s way can be known upon the earth and all the peoples may praise the Lord and make known his salvation. 

    In Luke’s Gospel, when the shepherds go in haste to Bethlehem, they too are blessed, and that blessing means that they too have seen God’s face shine upon them. They too contribute to making God’s way known upon the earth, and go forth glorifying and praising God. As a result of their visit, Mary’s maternity becomes a locus of contemplation, as she kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. And there is much to reflect upon. St. Paul reminds the Galatians that since Jesus was born of a woman, he partakes fully of our humanity; Mary’s physical body is thus the link of salvation between God and humankind, ultimately enabling all humankind to participate in the kingdom of God by their adoption as sons and daughters. 

    By contemplating Mary’s maternity – as Mary herself did, and must have done at every step of her life journey with her Son – we too can come better to understand how much we are loved by God, who sent his Son into our world, and who sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. We can, in other words, appreciate more fully how much we ourselves are blessed, and rejoice in the face of the Lord shining upon us, knowing that salvation is ours, and making known that salvation to the ends of the earth… 

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

God bless us, every one (Eric T. Styles)

Blessed is the season which
engages the whole world
in a conspiracy of love.
 

--Hamilton Wright Mabie

    Scrooge suffers from a failure to imagine the human world as more than one filled with worthless dregs who, as he so callously says, refuse to die and decrease the surplus population. Three spirits haunt him and seek to correct his memory and expand his heart. He is reminded again and again that his desires for wealth and self-sufficiency have long been disordered, costing him his marriage, his friendships and a chance at genuine happiness and life-giving purpose. 

    Scrooge is most moved by a child who sees his own tragically broken body as a reminder that the season we celebrate centers on the birth of the one who heals all wounds, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see. 

    [The] power and inherent meaning of the Incarnation of the Christ child, of God becoming like the children of this world draws us all into its salvific mystery. Christ joined and redeemed the whole human family in all of our complex and beautiful diversity. 

    Wealth cannot cure what Søren Kierkegaard aptly names as the sickness unto death—that ever-creeping possibility of despair, without which we would not be human. We are redeemed by the grace of the moment of revelation, much like Scrooge, who returns from his fanciful and spiritual journey transformed. Instead of avoiding his own history of isolation and loss, he accepts the opportunity to finally integrate its revelatory power into his life and rediscover the power of humility. The experience of being brought low, close to the ground, also exalts him, lifts him up. 

    The one who entered our world as the most vulnerable of children, ever willing to be an efficacious sacrament of the Father and creator of all, dares to reinvent what it means to be human and asks us to recognize him, the God who blesses us, in all of us, everyone. 

--Eric T. Styles,

What Being One of the First

Black Tiny Tims Taught Me

About the Incarnation 

Image source: https://www.pennlive.com/bodyandmind/2011/12/a_big_mystery_surrounding_tiny.html

Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2 & full article

This time requires a return to wonder (Pope Francis / Ed Simon)

Jesus, you are the Child who makes me a child.
 You love me as I am, not as I imagine myself to be.
 In embracing you, the Child of the manger,
I once more embrace my life.
 In welcoming you, the Bread of life,
I too desire to give my life.
 You, my Saviour, teach me to serve.
 You who did not leave me alone,
help me to comfort your brothers and sisters,
for, from this night forward, all are my brothers and sisters. 

--Pope Francis 

    What would appear to be a humble human birth is at the same time holy and miraculous, with animals laid down before the Lord, and the star of Bethlehem guiding the Magi to Christ’s cradle. 

   To wonder is to dwell in amazement, surprise and the miraculous. One can experience wonder when meditating upon the magnitude of the universe, or in contemplating Blake’s poetry or art. Wonder is when we apprehend the sublime and the magnificent in what we encounter every day, with both humility and delight. The wonder in the Christmas story is that something as human as a baby could also be something as foreign as God. 

   In thinking about the meaning of the Nativity today, I find its most potent and radical message to be one not just of wonder, but of wonder as means of approaching difference, of experiencing and understanding the Other. As God, Christ is supposed to be radically foreign, but as Jesus he is intimately human. The theology of incarnation explains that union’s tension, but the broader philosophical implications concern how love must be inculcated by wonder at this paradox. The philosopher Simon Critchley, describing the contours for a faith of the faithless, writes that Christ is the incarnation of love as an act of imagination… the imaginative projection of love onto all creatures.

   Wonder is the antidote to hatred, for wonder is fundamentally radical. Had Herod any sense of wonder for the exquisite singularity of all people, would the massacre of the innocents have commenced? If we had wonder at the individual universe that is each fellow human, at the cosmic complexity of other people, would we put refugees in cages? 

   We do not have to look far into the current state of the world to realize that this time requires a return to wonder — what I would call a politics of wonder, predicated on both empathy and celebration of difference. Those of us, religious believers or not, who understand the profound meaning of the Nativity must fight on behalf of wonder and in the service of a future society that places wonder at its very center. 

--Ed Simon, In Praise of Wonder 

Image source: https://www.amazon.com/Guardian-Family-Christmas-Nativity-Stoneware/dp/B00NI2OYO0 

Quotation source 1 

Quotation source 2

The real spirit of Christmas (von Balthasar / Coolidge)

Christmas is not an event within history 
but is rather an invasion of time by eternity.

--Hans Urs von Balthasar, 

Light of the Word 

Christmas is not a time or a season, 
but a state of mind.
 To cherish peace and goodwill,
to be plenteous in mercy,
is to have the real spirit of Christmas. 

 --Calvin Coolidge 

Image source: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/12/25/being-peacemakers-goodwill-men-sam-r-hall/95800176/
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Christmas is here! (Kings Return)

Hark! how the bells 

Sweet silver bells 

All seem to say 

‘throw cares away.’ 

Christmas is here 

Bringing good cheer 

To young and old 

Meek and the bold 

 

Ding, dong, ding, dong 

That is their song 

With joyful ring 

All caroling 

One seems to hear 

Words of good cheer 

From ev’rywhere 

Filling the air 

 

Oh how they pound 

Raising the sound 

O’er hill and dale 

Telling their tale 

Gaily they ring 

While people sing 

Songs of good cheer 

Christmas is here 

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas 

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas  

 

On, on they send 

On without end 

Their joyful tone 

To ev’ry home 

To hear the a cappella group Kings Return perform the Ukrainian-American Carol of the Bells, click on the video below:

Image source: Christmas in Ukraine, https://s2pu.com/index.php/en/culture/christmas-in-ukraine
Lyrics and history
Video source

Is your heart ready to welcome the Son of God made flesh for us? (Yadira Vierya)

   In our reading from the book of Isaiah, we begin with the imagery of the Israelites walking in darkness and then seeing a great light. This light brings about a new kind of joy: one that arrives through the birth of a son. But this isn’t just any child being born, it’s the Son of God. We hear that this son will have a vastly different dominion from the ones they have experienced at the hands of uncertainty and turmoil; his dominion will be forever peaceful. This same light – this same peace-bearing child – is the one born into our lives. We must remember, however, that receiving this child is a decision. If we do not accept and embrace the presence of Jesus in our daily lives, of what use is his peaceful dominion? If we do not have peace in our families, our homes, our marriages, of what use is God’s offering to us? 

   Christmas gives us a new opportunity to trust in [God’s] loyalty to us. Mary is the epitome of this mutual commitment. God found favor in Mary, a young woman, and chose her to be the bearer of Jesus’ humanity. Mary rejoiced. Mary trusted. She was selected to not just carry the Son of God in her womb, but to experience the full birth experience in the most meager of circumstances. Not in a private maternity suite, followed by a recovery suite with state-of-the-art labor and delivery equipment. Not a hospital lockdown to give the Mary and Joseph some privacy. The Son of God was born in a manger surrounded by animals and was only wrapped in swaddling clothes. Yet Mary continued to trust, and even rejoice. 

   In the Gospel of John, Jesus said to his disciples, when a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come, but when her child is born, her anguish turns into joy because she has brought a human being into the world. Mary is filled with a deep sense of joy. The reason for the joy is the birth of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, and so for us too, the reason we can experience joy is because of the birth of God’s Son. For Mary and Joseph, no lavish accommodations were needed to fully appreciate the joy of hope that came with the birth of Jesus Christ. Pope Francis talks about Christian joy as joy that cannot be bought, as it is a gift from God. It is a joy that is purified, in the same purified way that marked the birth of Jesus. 

   The God of the universe was really born; he walked among us and opened the doors to eternal life. 

   Even more wonderful, he walks with us today - truly, concretely, and practically. 

   What could keep us from celebrating today? 

   As you celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, what are you clinging onto? Your worries? Your plans for your future? Your fears? Or are you clinging onto the only one darkness could not overcome? Is your heart ready to welcome the son of God made flesh for us? Do you see the birth of Jesus Christ as a renewed opportunity to trust in God’s constancy like Mary did? 

   Such news fills us with hope and joy. Our savior is here – we no longer walk in darkness. 

--Yadira Vierya

Blessings at Christmas from
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley!

Image source 1: Arthur Hughes, Nativity (1857-1858), http://the-creative-business.com/24-famous-paintings-nativity/

Image source 2:  Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, https://www.facebook.com/mountcarmelmv/photos/a.4843422699052447/4881795878548462 

Quotation source

Fear not (A Charlie Brown Christmas & Fr. Bill Swichtenberg)

   We are all familiar with the Peanuts special A Charlie Brown Christmas, in which the main character’s friend Linus recites Luke 2:8-14, ending with, That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.  Linus is known for his ever-constant habit of sucking his thumb and for clinging to his security blanket at all times. And yet, in the midst of his recitation, Linus does an astonishing thing: he drops his blanket. 

   It’s easy to miss, and yet it’s an incredibly powerful moment, for it happens at precisely the moment when Linus recites Luke 2:10, Fear not. 

   Jesus’ birth, Linus seems to suggest, is meant to free us from our bondage to fear. The Incarnation invites us to let go of everything that keeps us from the Lord, and from one another, all that stands in the way of a more profound relationship with God. Jesus’ birth opens a way to that relationship, so long as we surrender all that offers us false security and embrace in its place the one truth that we can count on: the love of God, manifest in his Son Jesus. 

   Linus may pick his blanket up again at the end of his recitation – we all have issues with fear and insecurity throughout our lives. Our faith is never perfect. But recall the final scene of A Charlie Brown Christmas: as his friends all sing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, Linus lays that blanket at the foot of the tree, and this time, he does not look back. Linus has placed his full trust in God’s truth and in God’s love, one and for all. 

This post was inspired by Fr. Bill Swichtenberg’s homily 

at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Appleton, Wisconsin,
on Christmas Eve 2021.

Image & video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ8qjdxxzzE

A beautiful paradox (G. K. Chesterton)

    Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox: that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home. 

--G. K. Chesterton     

Image source: Sebastian Salamanca Huet, SJ, Rarámuri Nativity, https://thejesuitpost.org/2022/12/what-would-the-holy-family-look-like-today/?fbclid=IwAR1JtnT2BGXFn4-7OSXaU6bpvJKAE2rbLlpZSgJpzIkOi0vAf7LL2G0mqUE
Quotation source

We are not alone on our journey (Henri Nouwen)

   God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving toward the house of peace and joy. This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey. The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us. 

   The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be. A part of us clings to our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain. Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost. Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone. 

   Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him—whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend—be our companion. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Kim Hueng Jong, Christmas Scene, https://thejesusquestion.org/2015/12/25/more-nativity-paintings-from-around-the-world/ Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 25, 2022: I proclaim to you news of great joy!

I proclaim to you news of great joy!

    Looking around town, one can see that the Christmas season becomes more and more secular every year. We used to have stars on the lamp posts in Mill Valley, but they have been replaced by bows. For many, this holiday means something quite different than for those whose celebrate Christ’s Mass, the Christian Christmas. It can be somewhat discouraging to see how the faith that is behind our holiday gets diminished year after year. 

   Yet people in the secular world struggle to make this holiday their own, so they borrow whatever is transferrable. We still see lots of lights, and light is definitely a part of what Christians celebrate as well. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, Isaiah says. Those who had once lived in the land of gloom now live in bright sunlight. Isaiah speaks of dismal times – war, boots that trod in mud and cloaks rolled in blood, now good only to be burned as fuel. Yet even as they burn, they bring light. 

   So many things seem to be going wrong in the world. The virus keeps mutating and we are still masked and careful to protect one another. Yet there is also so much that seems right: we are alive. We can gather, and reaffirm to each other our faith and the power of Christ at work in our lives, the grace of his presence, the Incarnation, his birth as one of us. 

   Pope Francis speaks of this birth of such a small child, totally dependent on his parents to keep him wrapped in swaddling clothes [as Luke's Gospel tells us] and to feed him, and of the great humility of our humanity that needs help, a humanity that needs one another. How necessary we are to each other! With just a little humility on our part, there is so much we are capable of providing one another. It just requires that we get out of ourselves a bit, and let go of that self-focus that has become a way of life over the course of the pandemic, and begin to look at the needs that are around us. 

   We tend to push the Incarnation to the sidelines as though it were not important, but it is. Jesus doesn’t play at being human, he becomes fully human, incarnate. He shares our flesh; he shares our struggle. Because he is God doesn’t mean he didn’t feel cold that night. Because he is God doesn’t mean he wasn’t a little frightened by those who gathered around him that night. Because he was God doesn’t mean that his journey through life was going to be easy. Because he was God did not mean that death was going to be a breeze – far from it. When he died on the cross, he meant those words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? For every human being experiences a moment when they feel abandoned, and in order to take our full humanity with him to death, Jesus had to live it fully. Incarnation means everything to us. 

   And here’s the beauty: it doesn’t matter whether the world celebrates Christmas with a focus on Christ. It doesn’t matter if this holiday is about Santa to them. What does matter is what it means to us: that this child is born in our hearts, born again, that he might live among mankind, that he might be known. All it takes is a little generosity, a little consideration, a little kindness, and quite a bit of forgiveness (when families gather). In that mercy, the absolute love of God revealed in this child is revealed in us. That’s when Christmas is truly celebrated, because we believe in the power of this infant and his Incarnation and in the power of his death and resurrection to save us. What matters is that we believe enough to do as Paul suggested to Titus: believe enough that we might be convinced to do that which is good for each other, for that which is good for other is good for us. We build a better world, little by little, not by fighting it but by loving it. For the child came among us with open arms, ready to embrace an entire world and to love it fully, so much that mercy could spread. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,

December 25, 2021 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s 2021 Christmas Eve homily. 

Image source 1: www.wordclouds.com 

Image source 2 & text source: https://www.facebook.com/mountcarmelmv/videos/639542220522981

Lines written in the days of growing darkness (Mary Oliver)

Every year we have been 

witness to it: how the 

world descends 

 

into a rich mash, in order that 

it may resume. 

And therefore

who would cry out 

 

to the petals on the ground 

to stay, 

knowing as we must 

how the vivacity of what was is married 

 

to the vitality of what will be? 

I don’t say 

it’s easy, but 

what else will do 

 

if the love one claims to have for the world 

be true? 

 

So let us go on, cheerfully enough, 

this and every crisping day, 

 

though the sun be swinging east, 

and the ponds be cold and black, 

and the sweets of the year be doomed. 

--Mary Oliver, 

Lines Written in the Days
of Growing Darkness

Image source: https://thetrustees.org/event/79450/

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (Enya)

O come, O come, Emmanuel, 

And ransom captive Israel, 

That mourns in lonely exile here, 

Until the Son of God appear. 

 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel 

Shall come to thee, O Israel. 

 

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free 

Thine own from Satan's tyranny; 

From depths of hell Thy people save, 

And give them victory o'er the grave. 

 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel 

Shall come to thee, O Israel. 

 

O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high, 

And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh; 

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, 

And death's dark shadows put to flight. 

 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel 

Shall come to thee, O Israel. 

 

O come, Thou Key of David, come 

And open wide our heav'nly home; 

Make safe the way that leads on high, 

And close the path to misery. 

 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel 

Shall come to thee, O Israel. 

 

O come, Great Lord of might, 

Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height, 

In ancient times didst give the law 

In cloud and majesty and awe. 

 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel 

Shall come to thee, O Israel. 

To hear the amazing Irish musician perform another version of this lovely Advent hymn, a song which reminds us of all of the O Antiphons of the week before Christmas, click on the video below: 

Image source: http://catholiclivingtoday.blogspot.com/2010/12/behold-virgin-shall-conceive-and-bear.html 

Video source 

What are the O Antiphons?

What more perfect humility? (St. Francis de Sales)

   [Joseph’s] humility was the reason (thus St. Bernard explains it) that he wanted to leave our Lady, when he found her with child; for St. Bernard says that he held this discourse within himself — What is this? I know that she is a virgin, for we have made a vow together to keep our virginity and purity, which she would not on any account break, and yet I see that she is with child and that she is a mother. How can it be that maternity is found with virginity, and that virginity does not prevent maternity? O God! he said to himself, may she not be that glorious virgin of whom the prophets declare that she shall conceive and be the Mother of the Messiah? Oh! if it be so, God forbid that I should remain with her, I who am so unworthy; it were better to abandon her secretly, on account of my unworthiness, and not to live any longer in her company… What more perfect humility can be imagined than that of St. Joseph? 

--St. Francis de Sales 

Image source: Philippe de Champaigne, The Dream of St. Joseph (1642-1643), https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/philippe-de-champaigne-the-dream-of-saint-joseph
Quotation source

What are the signs? (Liz McCloskey)

   Joseph has a dream. An angel of God appears in his dream with a message: Don’t be afraid to wed Mary; it is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived this child.

    Now Joseph has a choice to make: will I go with this or let it divide me and Mary? He decides to trust God and to trust Mary, to trust this mysterious process, to recognize that God is creating something in Mary, and to be at home in it. 

   What are the signs in your own life that God is creating something new in you? and who is it that helps you see the signs? 

   Fear not. Say prophets. Say angels. Says God. 

   Trust. Say the Elizabeths and Josephs [and other friends] in my life who recognize the signs—sometimes even when I don’t—that in the midst of turbulence and trouble, distress and disruption, God is not only present, but God is presently and actively creating and transforming… 

--Liz McCloskey

Source of images: Joseph’s Dream, stone carving, Chartres Cathedral, France, https://www.storyofacity.com/2020/10/13/chartres-cathedral/
Quotation source

A growing inner stillness (Henri Nouwen)

   Advent leads to a growing inner stillness and joy allowing me to realize that the One for whom I am waiting has already arrived and speaks to me in the silence of my heart. 

--Henri Nouwen, 

The Genesee Diary: 

Report from a Trappist Monastery 

Image source: https://stnicholasgr.com/learning-how-to-keep-inner-peace/

St. Joseph, man who dreams (Pope Francis)

  Life often puts us in situations that we do not understand and that seem to have no solution. Praying in those moments means letting the Lord show us the right thing to do. 

   Fear is also a part of life, and it too needs our prayer… Joseph experiences fear, but God guides him through it. The power of prayer brings light into situations of darkness. 

St Joseph, man who dreams,
teach us to recover the spiritual life
as the inner place where God manifests Himself and saves us.
Remove from us the thought that praying is useless;
help each one of us to correspond to what the Lord shows us.
May our reasoning be illuminated by the light of the Spirit,
our hearts encouraged by His strength
and our fears saved by His mercy.
Amen. 

--Pope Francis      

Image source: Antonio Ciseri, The Dream of St. Joseph (19th c.), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Il_sogno_di_San_Giuseppe_by_Antonio_Ciseri.jpg Quotation source