The Catechism was not written to please you. It will not make life easy for you, because it demands of you a new life.

Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed "ecstasy," not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an on-going exodus out of the closed inward-looking self toward its liberation through self-giving... toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.

From earliest times, water has always been acknowledged as a primary human good and an indispensable natural resource. Around the great rivers of the world, like the Mississippi, great cultures have developed, while over the course of the centuries the prosperity of countless societies has been linked to these waterways. Today, however, the great fluvial systems of every continent are exposed to serious threats, often as a result of man's activity and decisions.

An authentically eucharistic Church is a missionary Church... Truly, nothing is more beautiful than to know Christ and to make him known to others.

Can man, the finite and sinful one, cooperate with God, the Infinite and Holy One? Yes, he can, precisely because God Himself has become man, become body, and here (in the liturgy), again and again, he comes through his body to us who live in the body.

I too hope in this short reign to be a man of peace.

Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world.