Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, or in the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear.

Like Mary, may we nurture the light born within us at Christmas. May we carry it everywhere in our daily lives.

Let us pray to the Lord and ask him to protect the family in the crisis with which the devil wants to destroy it. Families are the domestic church where Jesus grows in the love of a married couple, in the lives of their children.

And there is this fact of the twelve baskets: why twelve? What does it mean? Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel, symbolically it represents all the people. And this tells us that when food is shared equally, with solidarity, nobody is devoid of the necessary, each community can meet the needs of the poorest. Human ecology and environmental ecology go hand in hand.

Jesus Christ conferred power upon Peter, but what sort of power was it? Jesus’ three questions to Peter about love are followed by three commands: feed my lambs, feed my sheep. Let us never forget that authentic power is service, and that the Pope too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service which has its radiant culmination on the Cross.

Confirmation strengthens us to defend the faith and to spread the Gospel courageously

Jesus fought Satan in 'hand to hand combat' . . . 'you need to protect this victory.'