When the Lord wants to give us a mission, wants to give us a task, He prepares us. He prepares us to do it well...What is important is the whole journey by which we arrive at the mission the Lord entrusts to us...when the Lord gives a mission, He always has us enter into a process, a process of purification, a process of discernment, a process of obedience, a process of prayer.

Despite the slowness, the infidelity, the errors and sins it committed and might still commit against its members, the Church, trust me, has no other meaning and goal but to live and witness Jesus.

We can study the whole history of salvation, we can study the whole of Theology, but without the Spirit we cannot understand. It is the Spirit that makes us realize the truth or - in the words of Our Lord - it is the Spirit that makes us know the voice of Jesus.

We need to 'go out,' then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the 'outskirts' where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters.

Vocations are born in prayer and from prayer; and only in prayer can they persevere and bear fruit.

Resolve not to be overcome by evil, but to combat evil with good.

The alliance of love between a man and a woman, an alliance for life, cannot be improvised, and is not made in a day.