Forever God's Children

“I have been graced to experience these words in living reality every day through the actions and deeds of the South Sudanese people who struggle to live a life worthy of Jesus and eternal redemption.”

“Grace is an energy to act and behave in a certain way as well as a source of happiness. Our lives in Christ will include paradoxes and dislocations, and the teaching on the Beatitudes prepares us for this both as a reassurance and a task.”

“Let us be happy today because of those who are blessed, who see the face of God in the beatific vision, who did not follow any techniques to be happy but were given that happiness through being faithful disciples even in the face of persecution”

“I believe today’s gospel is also inviting us to look around and celebrate the saints among us. When I reread the words “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” many of the women that I have accompanied over the last 13 years in northeast Brazil came to mind.”

“Regardless of where we may feel we’re at in this moment, we should remember that fulfilment in God is what we were created for, and is at the very heart of our desires and longings”

“Had anyone else sat down on that mountain and saw that crowd, they may have said, “Wretched”, but not him. He sees them and he says: “Blessed.””

“The Beatitudes are about the things that love will suffer, they are about what love will willingly endure, the things that love will find itself able to give, and to find satisfaction and even delight in giving. And these things are endless.”

“The poor in spirit are those who know their need of God. Wealth, success or power are not their ultimate priority. Those who are poor in spirit have a detachment from such considerations.”

“the people who are best prepared to share God’s life, to enter heaven, are not necessarily the...people who’ve never done anything wrong because they’ve never taken the risk that’s often involved in trying to do something right.”

“What's holiness? It's friendship with God, friendship with God. That's the one thing you should want above all.”

“Jesus spent his lifetime seeking out those who needed him the most and he offered them healing, company, inclusion, love and eternal reward in heaven”

“If you want to be happy well then you want the divine life in you...the divine life is mercy, hesed, love.”

“You want to be happy? Seek mercy and peace. Become a conduit of these two things.”

“Be like unto Christ Jesus, that's what it means to follow the Beatitudes. And you know what? You'll be happy when you do.”

“When you make God the center of your life it means that God is everything, not your own control. It means that in some ways you will be powerful and in other ways you will be altogether weak. That doesn't matter so much when you made God the center of your life.”

“The goal of our life is not to live on in the memories of others, but rather it is to live on in God’s loving presence with all the saints forever in heaven”

“The Beatitudes are the standards of Christian perfection. And Christian perfection is living life from God’s point of view—the view of heaven. The life of a saint.”

“God’s holiness, Jesus’ holiness, is so rich that even a single great saint, the greatest saint, isn’t enough to express all of it”

“Think about the saint you know. Let us not be so much carried away by imaginary names unknown to us.Think about the people who have impacted positively on your life and who irrespective of human weaknesses tried their best to identify with Christ while on earth.”

“The only way that we are rendered unredeemable is when, through our free will, we decide to reject the unwavering and magnanimous mercy and compassion of God”

“To hope for the blessedness of heaven is not some psychological crutch for those too weak to look reality in the face, but an act of defiant hope in the face of the darkness of injustice in this world”

“The friendship of the saints in heaven is a purer friendship than our human friendship because it is not based on any need they have, except what we might call the need to allow their joy and love to overflow into this world.”

“When we see God face-to-face, will we be surprised if we recognize our own friends and family in God’s face? We are made in the image and likeness of God, and as we grow in love, we become more like God.”

“Our ultimate goal is to become saints ourselves, and a great way to do that is to follow the footsteps of those who have gone before.”

“Because if we know some people are with God, which we do, then we also know it is possible to be with God”

“Today we are not so much celebrating what human beings have achieved as celebrating the fruit of divine providence and the inevitable triumph of God’s love for humanity”

“Ordinary saints are the grout that holds our fragile world together. They fill in the cracks in our broken lives. They hold together the bricks that make up society.”

“Holiness is being fully alive, as God created each thing uniquely to be. There are as many ways of being a saint as there are human beings.”

“How fitting to reflect on how it is the day-to-day, ordinary decisions, thoughts and actions that make saints who they are. If they had not proven themselves during the ordinary tasks of living...they most likely would not have been able to be faithful in times of great distress or trial.”

“Today’s feast is about celebrating the open invitation by the God-of-Communion to all of creation and all peoples of every nation, and language as participants in God’s Trinitarian process that promises fullness of life for all”

“This is what it means to be holy, in the fullest meaning of some very simple words: a saint is someone who, held in God’s loving gaze, comes to see God”

“We do not call people saints just because they are loving or wise, but because their love and wisdom is rooted in and the expression of the love and wisdom, the holiness of God”

“We believe that Jesus Christ does make it possible that human beings can be better than we are and we believe that there are human beings, the saints, who demonstrate exactly what Christ has done”

“Holiness is to do with the extent to which a person has been open to the transforming life of God, and is therefore included in the community of salvation which we call the Body of Christ”

“The whole point of today’s celebration is not just an excuse for backward-looking nostalgia...It is a very real participation in the communion of saints, who are in a living and loving relationship with us in the very life of the Trinity.”

“Trust me, when you hunger and thirst for righteousness, when you want one thing, your clean of heart, when your whole life is about hesed or tender mercy, you will produce peace around you”

“What if you try this now, for an entire day, the only relevant question was: What's the righteous thing to do? What would conform me more and more to the love that God is?”

“the saints are God's masterpieces and he never tires of painting them in different colors according to different styles and different compositions”