NEWSLETTER INSERTS - ON THE MYSTERY OF GOD BECOMING HUMAN

“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:11-12). This is the paradoxical way in which peace is already among us: God’s gift invites us in; it seeks to be welcomed and, in turn, inspires our own self-giving. God surprises us because he leaves himself open to rejection. He also captivates us because he draws us away from indifference.  Becoming children of God is a true power – one that remains buried so long as we keep our distance from the cry of children and the frailty of the elderly, from the helpless silence of victims and the resigned melancholy of those who do the evil they do not want".

Pope Leo XIV, Homily at Mass for Christmas Day 2025

"Since the Word was made flesh, humanity now speaks, crying out with God’s own desire to encounter us. The Word has pitched his fragile tent among us. How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold; and of those of so many other refugees and displaced persons on every continent; or of the makeshift shelters of thousands of homeless people in our own cities? Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds. Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths".

Pope Leo XIV, Homily at Mass for Christmas Day 2025

"This is the way of mission: a path toward others. In God, every word is an addressed word; it is an invitation to conversation, a word never closed in on itself…The opposite is worldliness: to have oneself at the centre. The movement of the Incarnation is a dynamic of conversation.  There will be peace when our monologues are interrupted and, enriched by listening, we fall to our knees before the humanity of the other. In this, the Virgin Mary is the Mother of the Church, the Star of Evangelization, the Queen of Peace. In her, we understand that nothing is born from the display of force, and everything is reborn from the silent power of life welcomed".

Pope Leo, Homily at Mass for Christmas Day 2025

“Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness”

Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 270.

‘Consuming fire, Spirit of love, come down upon me and make me, as it were, an incarnation of the Word…that I may be immersed in you until I go to gaze forever in your light, on the boundless depths of your greatness’

St Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol 1, 183.

“God is Love! This is the ineffable revelation with which the Jubilee, through its teaching, its indulgence, its forgiveness and finally its peace, full of tears and joy, has sought to fill our spirit today and our lives tomorrow: God is Love! God loves me! God awaited me, and I have found him! God is mercy! God is forgiveness! God is salvation! God, yes, God is life!”

Pope St Paul VI, General Audience, 17 December 1975.