Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another.

We can pray perfectly when we are out in the mountains or on a lake and we feel at one with nature. Nature speaks for us or rather speaks to us. We pray perfectly.

Real love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not clearly tell you so. For it was Jesus - our Jesus himself - who said: 'You are my friends if you do what I command you'. Love demands effort and a personal commitment to the will of God. It means discipline and sacrifice, but it also means joy and human fulfilment.

In this oasis of quiet, before the wonderful spectacle of nature, one easily experiences how profitable silence is, a good that today is ever more rare... In reality, only in silence does man succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God, which really makes him free. And vacations can help to rediscover and cultivate this indispensable interior dimension of human life.

The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation.

The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

Like so many pilgrims before us, we kneel in wonder and adoration before the ineffable mystery which. was accomplished here... In This Child - the Son who is given to us - we find rest for our souls and the true bread that never fails - the Eucharistic Bread foreshadowed even in the name of this town: Bethlehem, the house of bread. God lies hidden in the Child; divinity lies hidden in the Bread of Life