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Pause for a moment and look around you. Simply thank God for all the gifts that you have right now, all the gifts saved from the wreck of life: the lamp that illumines this page, the chair that gives you comfort, the home that provides shelter. That’s a good exercise of stewardship.

Thank God for the sun and stars in the sky, for the support of friends, for the opportunities of a new day, for the ability to laugh and cry. A disciple receives everything with gratitude. It is prayer that helps keep the heart grateful and filled with joy.

It’s not the darkness itself that we must understand. It’s the force behind the darkness and within the darkness … the force moving through life that we must know. This is the great passage: to see deep into our own nature by meeting its reflection in everything around us. To swim with something very big. To allow the Universe to love us and to love deeply in return … to allow this story to trace itself through the chapters of our life. To live within the miracle.

John Paul acknowledges that everyone suffers, and suffering is an evil because it diminishes physical and psychological well-being. It can also be spiritually destructive, leading as it does to doubt the existence of God. Why would a good and loving God allow pain in his world? It’s a question as old as Job.

Saint Francis spent almost half of his life on and in the mountains, and the other half he spent on the road entering and leaving cities. As Jesus walked up the mountain to pray, then descended and moved among the people, so did Francis and the early brothers, discovering, contemplating, and sanctifying new places, as they continued to walk beyond their own history, as do we if we learn to walk into and out of our own Assisi as pilgrims.

Is it possible to describe Pope Francis in a single word? I will try to suggest one: the pope of patience. Young people, he recognizes, rightly feel the need to change the world. But, very quickly, as they grow up, they discover that this objective is unattainable if they are in a hurry. It can only be done with patience. This is something that parents know well when they understand that, beyond giving a model of life to their children, they must just learn to wait until the child makes his or her own life and, if need be, his or her own mistakes.

What would you think of a father who took his daughter’s scribbled picture, tore it up, and told her not to draw again until she got it exactly right? No good father would do that!

In the Psalm we said: “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things” (Psalm 98:1). Today we consider one of the marvelous things which the Lord has done: Mary! A lowly and weak creature like ourselves, she was chosen to be the Mother of God, the Mother of her Creator.

To Francis everything in him and around him was a gift from his Father in Heaven. He expected nothing, so he was grateful for everything. Even a piece of earth was cause for rejoicing, and he thanked God always for everything that was. He held everything to his heart with the enthusiasm of a child surprised by some unexpected toy. The air he breathed, the sounds he heard, the sights and smells of all the world entered his grateful soul through senses perfected by gratitude and purity of heart.