Where we find hate and darkness, may we bring love and hope, in order to give a more human face to society.

Let us never yield to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day.

Today let us all ask ourselves whether we are afraid of what God might ask, or of what he does ask.... Do I truly let God into my life? How do I answer him?

We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give.

Jesus on the cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God's love he conquers it; he defeats it with his resurrection. This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the cross. Christ's cross, embraced with love, never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little of what he did on the day of his death.

As stewards of God's creation, we are called to make the earth a beautiful garden for the human family.

To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.