Co-Workers of the Truth Quotes

“The way we order our time is dependent on the way we order our Sunday.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“rejection of truth is the real core of our crisis.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“The places of pilgrimage have marked a kind of geography of faith in our country, that is, they make visible, almost tangible, how our forefathers encountered the living God, how HE did not withdraw after creation or after the time of Jesus Christ, but is always present and works in them so that they were able to experience HIM, follow in his footsteps, and see him in the works HE performed. Yes, HE is there, and HE is still there today. It is from this inner encounter with the Lord that there originated the places and images of pilgrimage in which we, so to speak, can participate in what they saw, in what their faith provided for them.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“Kolbe lived from and for Jesus. He could do this because he heard in Scripture the voice of a living Person. He heard Jesus as a living Person because he experienced him as a living Person; he could touch him in the Blessed Sacrament in which he forms a Church and is present for us. Sacrament and Scripture together made it possible for Kolbe to experience the one living Christ. Like Francis and Bonaventure, he was convinced that to look upon Christ is to look, not backward, but forward. We do not go forward when we heap up more and more possessions around us; we go forward when we become more ready for God, more ready for love.”
― Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“January 24 At the center of the canon of the Mass is the account of what took place on the eve of Jesus’ Passion and death. When the priest speaks the words of the canon, he is not telling a story from the past, a mere recollection of an earlier time; he is telling what is actually taking place in the present. “This is my Body”; that is being said in the here-and-now. But these are the words of Jesus Christ. No mere human can say them.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“The genuine mark of the Church is her exousia— the power, the fullness of power, given her to utter the words of salvation and to perform the acts of salvation that men need, but cannot provide for themselves. No one can appropriate to himself the I of Christ or of God. Yet it is with this I that the priest speaks when he says, “This is my body”, or when he says, “I forgive you your sins.” It is not the priest who absolves us from our sins—that would have little value; no, it is God who absolves us, and that, of course, changes everything. But what an awesome privilege it is that a man is permitted to take into his mouth the I of God. He can do it only by virtue of that fullness of power that the Lord has given his Church and without which he is just a social worker, nothing more.”
― Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“How should we, as Christians, react to this hour of transition? First of all, surely, by the entirely human reaction to which it summons us: by using this time of reflection to gain distance, perspective, inner freedom, and a patient readiness to move on. An ancient philosopher once commented that the essential difference between man and the animal is that the always has his head, as it were, above the waters of time. Like a swimming fish, on the other hand, the animal is carried along by the current of time; only man can see above it and so be master of it. But do we really do that? Are not we, too, like fish in the waters of the sea of time, carried along by its currents without seeing whence or whither? Are we not so submerged, from one day to the next, from one task to the next, in the details of daily living, in its endless demands and difficulties, that we have no time even for ourselves? If that is so, then this should be the hour when we rise above these things, the hour when we try for a moment to see the heavens above the waters and the stars that shine upon us, in order, at the same time, to comprehend ourselves. We should try to review and evaluate the way we have traveled. We should try to see where we have gone wrong, what has obstructed for us the way that leads to ourselves and to others. We should try to know this so that we can divorce ourselves interiorly from these obstacles, so that the way into the new year may truly be for us a way of progress, may truly be a step forward.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year