“Dear children, may this time be for you a time of prayer and fasting. Return, little children, in love to God Who is your peace. I am with you, little children, and I love you with my motherly tenderness. Thank you for having responded to my call.” -Our Lady of Medjugorje, in private revelation given to Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, on May 25, 2026
From the encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” by Pope Leo XIV:
The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face [and] not merely as a function. The ability to care for one another is a fundamental dimension of our humanity, one that is learned and mastered through lived experience. Reading stories to a child, offering company to an elderly person, and arranging a home so that it is welcoming are simple gestures often rooted in family life. They teach us to value care at a societal level and train us to recognize others as persons worthy of attention. Technology can also support this mutual care between people, for example, by providing tools that help us anticipate and organize things, without undermining human freedom and judgment. After all, human beings are the subjects of relationships and responsible for their own decisions….
If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy. In the name of progress, “necessary sacrifices” may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species. In this regard, the aforementioned warning of Saint Paul VI retains great foresight: indeed, scientific and technological advances, when detached from moral and social progress, end up turning against humanity. For this reason, a clear distinction must be made. It is one thing to integrate technology within a human-centered, relational vision; it is quite another to be guided by an outlook that devalues human limits and promises a purely technical form of “salvation.”
Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a “limit”—incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability—tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. The light of faith offers a perspective on reality that helps us recognize what we call the “contingency” of the things of this world. While it is right to strive to alleviate the suffering that marks human life, it is also wise to acknowledge our fundamental finitude, knowing that “religious experience, and in particular Christian faith, propose that we live, without oversimplification, this ambivalence between human greatness and limitation, interpreting it in the light of our original and fundamental relationship with God.” (see “Quo vadis, humanitas?” by the International Theological Commission)
It is precisely within our limitations that the following find a place: compassion, as well as a sincere concern for the needs of others; a generosity that can emerge even in the midst of darkness and failure; spiritual experience and the worship of God. We see this at many moments when our limits become tangible: when we face rejection, when we suffer the illness or loss of a loved one, when we encounter our own weakness or failure. Mysteriously, it is precisely in such moments that we can discover a new wisdom, tangibly experience the closeness of others, and encounter the presence of the Lord.
Even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering, human wisdom teaches us not to deny or suppress it, but to integrate it. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. It is only thanks to the interplay of these elements that the wonders of the soul occur within us, allowing us to sense the richness of our humanity. To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human.
“If we devalue the heart, we also devalue what it means to speak from the heart, to act with the heart, to cultivate and heal the heart. If we fail to appreciate the specificity of the heart, we miss the messages that the mind alone cannot communicate; we miss out on the richness of our encounters with others; we miss out on poetry. We also lose track of history and our own past, since our real personal history is built with the heart. At the end of our lives, that alone will matter.” –Pope Francis
From a letter by Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity:
My Framboise, when we contemplate our eternal predestination, visible things seem so worthless. Listen to St. Paul: “Those whom God has foreknown, He has also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” (That is not all, my little one, you are going to see that you are one of the number of the “known”!) “And those He has known He has called”: it is Baptism which has made you a child of adoption, which has stamped you with the seal of the Holy Trinity! “And those whom He has called, He has also justified” (see Romans 8:29-30): how often you have been justified by the Sacrament of Penance and by all those touches of God in your soul, without you even being aware of it!
“And those whom He justified, He has also glorified.” That is what awaits you in eternity! But remember that our degree of glory will depend on the degree of grace in which God finds us at the moment of death; allow Him to complete His work of predestination in you. To do this, listen to St. Paul again who will give you a program of life.
“Walk in Jesus Christ, rooted in Him, built up on Him and strengthened in faith and growing in Him in thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6-7) Yes, little child of my heart and soul, walk in Jesus Christ: you need this broad road, for you were not made for the narrow paths of here below! Be rooted in Him. This implies being uprooted from self, or doing everything as if you were, by denying self each time you meet it. Be built up on Him, high above everything that is passing, there where everything is pure, everything is luminous.
Be strengthened in faith, that is, never act except in the great light of God, never according to impressions or your imagination. Believe that He loves you, that He wants to help you in the struggles you have to undergo. Believe in His love, His exceeding love, as St. Paul says (see Ephesians 2:4). Nourish your soul on the great thoughts of faith which will reveal to you all its richness and the end for which God has created you! If you live like this, your piety will never be a nervous exaltation as you fear but will be true. Truth is so beautiful, the truth of love. “He loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20) That, my little child, is what it means to be true!
And finally, grow in thanksgiving. That is the last word of the program and is but the consequence of it. If you walk rooted in Christ, strengthened in your faith, you will live in thanksgiving: the love of the sons of God! I wonder how a soul that has sounded the depths of love the Heart of God has “for it” could be anything but joyful in every suffering and sorrow. Remember that “He has chosen you in Him before the creation of the world to be immaculate and pure in His presence in love” (cf. Ephesians 1:4); again it is St. Paul who says this. So do not fear struggles or temptations: “When I am weak,” exclaimed the Apostle, “it is then I am strong, for the strength of Jesus Christ dwells in me.” (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
