The Loving Heart of God
May 13, 2025
Lord Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd and High
Priest,
We praise you and offer you our sincere gratitude for calling Pope Leo XIV to serve as the shepherd of the universal church.
May he lead us as a loving shepherd who cares for his flock and seeks out the lost sheep.
May he be for us a gentle and listening father, a faithful teacher and a steward of your sacred mysteries.
Grant him health, strength, and wisdom.
Strengthen the bonds of unity among us so that we may serve you as one body.
Purify us and sustain us in charity for your love for us never fails.
Grant that we may boldly answer your call to mission.
You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.
Happy feast day blessings from Our Lady of
Fatima to each and every one!!! Happy Mother’s Day too to each and every
one!!! I have always considered each and
every female, a mother in every sense.
Every female can give life; has the potential of a mother.
The Holy Father met with the media representatives at the Pope Pius VI Audience Hall; allow me please to share with you the full text of Pope Leo XIV’s address to them in today’s post. A beautiful challenge to each and every one including you and me.
ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER LEO XIV
TO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MEDIA
Audience Hall
Monday, 12 May 2025
___________________________________
Good morning and thank you for this wonderful reception!
They say when they clap at the beginning it does not matter much, if you are
still awake at the end and you still want to applaud…thank you very much!
Brothers and sisters,
I welcome you, representatives of the media from around the
world. Thank you for the work you have done and continue to do in these days,
which is truly a time of grace for the Church.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaimed: “Blessed are
the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9). This is a Beatitude that challenges all
of us, but it is particularly relevant to you, calling each one of you to
strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus
at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of
competition and never separates the search for truth from the love with which
we must humbly seek it. Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we
look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way
we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say “no” to the war of
words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.
Let me, therefore, reiterate today the Church’s solidarity
with journalists who are imprisoned for seeking to report the truth, and with
these words I also ask for the release of these imprisoned journalists. The
Church recognises in these witnesses – I am thinking of those who report on war
even at the cost of their lives – the courage of those who defend dignity,
justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed
individuals can make free choices. The suffering of these imprisoned
journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international
community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech
and of the press.
Thank you, dear friends, for your service to the truth. You
have been in Rome these past few weeks to report on the Church, its diversity
and, at the same time, its unity. You were present during the liturgies of Holy
Week and then reported on the sorrow felt over the death of Pope Francis, which
nevertheless took place in the light of Easter. That same Easter faith drew us
into the spirit of the Conclave, during which you worked long and tiring days.
Yet, even on this occasion, you managed to recount the beauty of Christ’s love
that unites and makes us one people, guided by the Good Shepherd.
We are living in times that are both difficult to navigate
and to recount. They present a challenge for all of us but it is one that we
should not run away from. On the contrary, they demand that each one of us, in
our different roles and services, never give in to mediocrity. The Church must
face the challenges posed by the times. In the same way, communication and
journalism do not exist outside of time and history. Saint Augustine reminds of
this when he said, “Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the
times” (Discourse 80.8).
Thank you, therefore, for what you have done to move beyond
stereotypes and clichés through which we often interpret Christian life and the
life of the Church itself. Thank you because you have captured the essence of
who we are and conveyed it to the whole world through every form of media
possible.
Today, one of the most important challenges is to promote
communication that can bring us out of the “Tower of Babel” in which we
sometimes find ourselves, out of the confusion of loveless languages that are
often ideological or partisan. Therefore, your service, with the words you use
and the style you adopt, is crucial. As you know, communication is not only the
transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture, of human
and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion. In
looking at how technology is developing, this mission becomes ever more
necessary. I am thinking in particular of artificial intelligence, with its
immense potential, which nevertheless requires responsibility and discernment
in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can
benefit all of humanity. This responsibility concerns everyone in proportion to
his or her age and role in society.
Dear friends, we will get to know each other better over
time. We have experienced – we can say together – truly special days. We have
shared them through every form of media: TV, radio, internet, and social media.
I sincerely hope that each of us can say that these days unveiled a little bit
of the mystery of our humanity and left us with a desire for love and peace.
For this reason, I repeat to you today the invitation made by Pope Francis in
his message for
this year’s World Day of Social Communications: let us disarm communication of all
prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from
aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather
communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the
weak who have no voice. Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the
world. Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different view
of the world and to act in a manner consistent with our human dignity.
You are at the forefront of reporting on conflicts and
aspirations for peace, on situations of injustice and poverty, and on the silent
work of so many people striving to create a better world. For this reason, I
ask you to choose consciously and courageously the path of communication in
favour of peace.
Thank you all and may God bless you!
Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria
Editrice Vaticana
Shall we now continue and end the last chapter of the book on the topic of our longing for Divine Love (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 11).
Receiving the Heart of God
God loves us so much! It sounds trite to say it in such simple words, but it is infinitely true! God’s love is so deep, so powerful, so profound, it is often simply easier to passively ignore it than actively try to comprehend it.
But God can. And he does. That is what grace is, the very life of God in us. When God gives us his grace, it is like he is taking his heart—beating with love and passion and joy—out of his own chest and placing it in ours so that we can be filled with everything he feels for us and see all the wonders he sees when he looks at us through his eyes of love.
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque experienced visions of our Lord in which he held his heart in his hands, extending it to her as a sign of his love and passion. In those visions, she heard our Lord say, “Behold the heart that has so loved humankind.” God loves you so much that he wants to place his Sacred Heart in your chest, that you could feel the constant beat of his love filling you up in the deepest parts of yourself.
Hark! The sound of my lover! Here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. See! He is standing behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices. My lover speaks and says to me, “Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!” (Sg 2:8-10)
Throughout this book we have explored the seven divine longings of your heart: the longings for abundance, dignity, justice, peace, trust, well-being, and communion. Each of these longings is really an invitation from God to join him at the altar of the eternal wedding feast.
In my marriage counseling work, I remind couples that we never say “I do” once. Every day we have a million opportunities to say “I do.” In fact, every day we also have a million opportunities to say “I don’t” to our spouse. When I love my wife, when I treat her with dignity and respect, when I look for little ways to make her life easier and more pleasant, I say “I do.” When I get too caught up in my own world to attend to her, when I fail to respect or honor her, when I fail to have her back, I say “I don’t.”
Learning to love, in general, isn’t easy. Learning to love God is even more of a challenge. But learning to love is the only work that’s really worth doing. Let him teach you. Give him all the deepest longings of your heart every moment of every day. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t be afraid. He loves every part of you; especially the parts that you are afraid are unlovable. He knows that behind the sins, and the brokenness, and the shame is something beautiful, something divine, and he has sacrificed everything to show you how beautiful you are, and how much more beautiful you can become if you will just place his heart next to yours.
With this
the book on Broken Gods,
Hope, Healings, The Seven Divine Longings of the Human Heart by Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. ends. I personally confess that I have
learned a lot going through the book and each of the divine longings with you. Just in this post there is much to bring into
our conversation with Our Lord and listening to what He will tell us in these
days of this week.
Let us ask
the Holy Spirit to guide us and enlighten our minds and hearts to whatever He
wills for each one of us. Be at peace and be assured He will do His part and He
will help us do our part as we ask Him.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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