Our gifts seem so small in comparison to God’s. But our efforts count, even though like Simeon we only stretch out our arms in the patience of faith so that we may receive the Holy Gift. Even though we only wait, poor and yearning in the darkness, in fervent longing for the proclamation, we are ready, and may help bring about the fullness of time.

Raising children should mean helping them to become what they already are in God’s eyes.

Our gifts seem so small in comparison to God’s. But our efforts count, even though like Simeon we only stretch out our arms in the patience of faith so that we may receive the Holy Gift. Even though we only wait, poor and yearning in the darkness, in fervent longing for the proclamation, we are ready, and may help bring about the fullness of time.

God does not work by only one method, paint in only one color, play in only one key, nor does he make only one star shine onto the earth.

Brothers and sisters, love the earth. Be true to the earth, and do not believe those seducers who look longingly to the world beyond, casting suspicion on this world. Jesus is the greatest friend of the earth-Jesus who again and again, in the original spirit of Judaism, proclaimed love for the soil and love for the land. "Blessed are the peacemakers," he said, "for they shall possess the earth."

We need to reach the millions who live in cities, the hundreds of thousands in industrial centers, the tens of thousands in medium-sized towns, the thousands in small towns, and the hundreds in villages -- all these at once. Like a volcanic eruption, a spiritual revolution needs to spread through the country, to spur people to crucial decisions. People have to recognize the futility of splitting life up into politics, economics, the humanities, and religion. We must be awakened to a life in which all of these things are completely integrated.

After all, the living book of God's creation lies open for all to see; it points constantly to the divine calling for which we were placed in nature. Nature is a continual admonition to us, for nowhere has God's creation departed so far from its origin and primeval purpose as in the human race.