POPESPEAK
Pope Francis blesses the crowd during a meeting with the youth University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Sunday January 18, 2015. REY S. BANIQUET/NIB
Selected quotations from Pope Francis’ spontaneous remarks during his meeting with the youth at University of Santo Tomas on Sunday:
— “Real love is being open to the love that comes to you, the love that surprises us. If you only have information you are not surprised. Love surprises because it opens a dialogue of loving and being loved.”
— “Allow yourselves to be surprised by God. Don’t be afraid of surprises. They shake the ground beneath our feet and make us insecure, but they move us forward in the right direction.”
— “Certain realities of life we only see through eyes cleansed by our tears. I invite each one here to ask yourself: Have I learned how to weep?”
— “If you don’t learn how to cry, you cannot be a good Christian.”
— “We have so much information but maybe we don’t know what to do with that information. So we run the risk of becoming museums of young people who have everything but not knowing what to do with it.”
— “For this the Gospel offers us a serene way forward: using the three languages of the mind, heart and hands—and to use them in harmony. What you think, you must feel and put into effect. Your information comes down to your heart and you put it into practice. Harmoniously. What you think, you feel and you do. Feel what you think and feel what you do. Do what you think and what you feel.”
— “Real love is about loving and letting yourself be loved. It’s harder to let yourself be loved than to love.”
— “To be wise use three languages: Think well, feel well and do well. And to be wise allow yourselves to be surprised by the love of God. That will guarantee a good life.”
— “Let us not have a computer psychology that makes us think we know it all. All answers on computers—but no surprises.”
— “How many young people among you are like this? You know how to give and yet you have ever learned how to receive? You still lack one thing. Become a beggar. This is what you still lack. Learn how to beg. This isn’t easy to understand. To learn how to beg. To learn how to receive with humility. To learn to be evangelized by the poor, by those we help, the sick, orphans—they have so much to give us.”
— “Do you think of the poor? Do you feel with the poor? Do you do something for the poor? Do you ask the poor to give you the wisdom they have?”
Selected quotes from homily at Quirino Grandstand:
— “Today, Saint Paul has told us that in Christ we have become God’s adopted children—brothers and sisters in Christ. This is who we are. This is our identity.”
— “Filipinos are called to be outstanding missionaries of the faith in Asia.”
— “We forget to remain focused on the things that really matter. We forget to remain, at heart, children of God. That is sin: [to] forget at heart that we are children of God.”
— “We too need to protect, guide and encourage our young people, helping them to build a society worthy of their great spiritual and cultural heritage. Specifically, we need to see each child as a gift to be welcomed, cherished and protected. And we need to care for our young people, not allowing them to be robbed of hope and condemned to life on the streets.”
— “Now, at the end of my visit to the Philippines, I commend you to Him, to Jesus who came among us as a child. May he enable all the beloved people of this country to work together, protecting one another, beginning with your families and communities, in building a world of justice, integrity and peace.”
— “May the Santo Niño continue to bless the Philippines and may he sustain the Christians of this great nation in their vocation to be witnesses and missionaries of the joy of the Gospel in Asia and in the whole world.”
— “Reality is superior to ideas.”
For the full transcript, go to https://globalnation.inquirer.net
/117611/message-of-pope-francis-to-filipino-youth-at-ust
