You have perhaps waited for years to be freed from some need. For a long, long time you have looked out from the darkness in search of the light, and have had a difficult problem in life that you have not been able to solve in spite of great efforts. And then, when the time was fulfilled and God's hour had come, did not a solution, light, and deliverance come quite unexpectedly, perhaps quite differently than you thought?

Whoever is gripped by God's spirit turns to his creation with all the interest that comes from God's love.

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.

Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder.

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.

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.

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.