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With the Eucharist, we join with our fellow Catholics, our neighbors, and our friends to be fed by the Lord. We celebrate together, not alone. In this way, Mother Church keeps our faith from being a solitary experience. If there were no Church, there would be no real community of believers. We might have our personal “spirituality,” but we would lack the support, the fellowship, and the mutual encouragement that comes from belonging to a family of faith.

I began to see that the intent of Christ was never to relegate redemption to the spiritual realm, leaving us to wait desperately to shed this cumbersome physical world. No, he is in all things and he holds everything together. He is in the bread we eat, he is in the touch of our neighbor, he is in the tears of our children, he is in the dirt we dig up, and he is in the voice of the poor. 

I can’t escape the million proofs of a Creator’s delight in creation nor his determination to use it to woo me on earth.

Today I was very moved when, after Mass, I visited a home for children without families. How many people work in the Church to make that home a family! This is what it means, in a prophetic sense, to build a family.

You may be poor yourselves in material ways, but you have an abundance of gifts to offer when you offer Christ and the community of his Church. Do not hide your faith, do not hide Jesus, but carry him into the world and offer the witness of your family life!

We are members of the Church. As such, through the Eucharist, our lives are united to Christ and his offering. The sacrifice of Christ made present on the altar enables all Christians to join themselves to his offering.

So, each one of us helps Mother Church to make her sacrifice. We jointly offer our praise, our sufferings, our prayers, and our work together as a community of faith. And through the sacramental mystery, these little offerings of ours are joined to the one supreme offering of Jesus: his death on the cross.

My dear friend and spiritual mother, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, encouraged me to turn to Mary often with this simple prayer: “Mary, Mother of Jesus, be Mother to me now.”  

Mother Teresa often prodded me to “bring others to Jesus through Mary.” In the almost two dozen letters she wrote to me, she frequently mentioned Mother Mary. In one she said, “Pray to Our Lady—pray the rosary very fervently, cling to Our Lady. She will surely lead you to Jesus to know His will for you.”

Was there a time in your life when you turned your back on God? If so, have you asked forgiveness? Can you let go of the past and move forward in God’s love? Can you trust God with your life?

The Blessed Mother tells us that we will receive all of the graces we need to follow God’s holy will in our lives. There is nothing to worry about when we trust God.

We must ask the Lord to grant us the Holy Spirit and to grant us the gift of wisdom, that wisdom of God that teaches us to see with God’s eyes, to feel with God’s heart, to speak with God’s words. And so, with this wisdom, let us go forward, let us build our family, let us build the Church, and we will all be sanctified.

— from The Blessing of Family: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis

“Be of good heart.” I love that saying because it is true. We should be of good heart no matter what happens because we know—or we should know—that we are Mary’s very own children and that she loves us beyond what words can adequately describe. We have, not only the right, but the obligation to call out to her when we are in trouble. Like all good mothers, her ears are tuned to the voices of her children. She knows each one individually and is constantly listening.