Often
when you think
you’re at
the end of something,

you’re at
the beginning
of something else.

Fred Rogers

From the Holy Father’s homily at Confirmation last Sunday:

If the choir was to be a success, the obvious first thing to do was to ease out some of the problem voices. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know why, but something told me that every single person in that choir was more important than the music. “But the music is going to be terrible,” I wailed to this invisible voice. “

That doesn’t matter. That’s not the reason for this choir.” I didn’t ask what was, but struggled along. The extraordinary, lovely thing was that the music got to be pretty good, far better, I am now convinced, than it would have been if I’d put the music first and the people second.

-Madeleine L’Engle, Circle of Quiet

An optimist’s view of the world:

To build, to construct the Church. This means stones. Stones are solid but these are living stones, stones that are anointed by the Holy Spirit. To build the Church, the Bride of Christ, on the cornerstone that is the Lord himself.

To witness … We can walk when we want to, we can build many things, but if we do not witness to Jesus Christ then it doesn’t matter. We might become a philanthropic NGO but we wouldn’t be the Church, the Bride of the Lord. When we don’t go forward we stop…we go backwards. When we don’t build on rock, what happens? The same thing that happens to children when they build sandcastles at the beach. They wind up falling down because they have no solidity.

To walk, to build, to witness. But this is not so easy because when we walk, when we build, when we witness, at times there are upsets, there are movements that aren’t proper to the journey. They are movements that pull us back.”

In the Gospel, even Peter who confessed Jesus as Christ, says to Him: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. I will follow you but let’s not talk about the Cross. That doesn’t have anything to do with it. … I’ll follow you, without the Cross. (But) when we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess a Christ without the Cross … we aren’t disciples of the Lord. We are worldly, we are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.

And I wish that all of us, after these grace-filled days, might have the courage, yes, the courage to walk in the Lord’s presence with the Cross of the Lord, to build the Church on the blood of the Lord that is poured out on the Cross and to witness to the sole glory: to the crucified Christ. And thus the Church will move forward.

Pope Francis
yesterday

He must be a man of deep faith; someone who can communicate the faith is important.
People are anxious to have someone who’s able to touch the hearts of someone
— particularly of our young people —
and to carry on this New Evangelization by inspiring people
to come back to the faith if they’ve stepped away.

So I think his own personal holiness and ability to communicate the faith
and to lead us as a Church is what people are looking for.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley
Boston

h/t Jack