"You have to work with young people by doing things, working with the popular missions, social work, going every week to feed the homeless,” the Holy Father continued “Young people find the Lord in action. Then, after action they have to reflect. But reflection alone doesn’t help, because it is only ideas ... ideas. So, two concepts: listening and movement. This is important. But not only training young people to listen, but first listening to them, the young people themselves. This is an important priority for the Church: listening to young people.”
-To the 88th General Assembly of the Union of Superiors General, November 25, 2016 

"Take action! Live life to the full! And when others see the witness you give, they may ask: why do you live this way?"
-Via Twitter, 2/4/17

"Life is not simply a bare succession of events, but a history, a story waiting to be told through the choice of an interpretative lens that can select and gather the most relevant data. In and of itself, reality has no one clear meaning. Everything depends on the way we look at things, on the lens we use to view them. If we change that lens, reality itself appears different. So how can we begin to “read” reality through the right lens? For us Christians, that lens can only be the good news, beginning with the Good News par excellence: “the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God” (Mk 1:1)...

This good news – Jesus himself – is not good because it has nothing to do with suffering, but rather because suffering itself becomes part of a bigger picture... every new tragedy that occurs in the world’s history can also become a setting for good news, inasmuch as love can find a way to draw near and to raise up sympathetic hearts, resolute faces and hands ready to build anew."

-Message for the 51st World Communications Day, Communicating Hope and Trust in our Time, January 24, 2017

"The Magi... personify all those who believe, those who long for God, who yearn for their home, their heavenly homeland. They reflect the image of all those who in their lives have not let their hearts be anesthetized. A holy longing for God wells up in the heart of believers because they know that the Gospel is not an event of the past but of the present. A holy longing for God helps us keep alert in the face of every attempt to reduce and impoverish our life. A holy longing for God is the memory of faith, which rebels before all prophets of doom. That longing keeps hope alive in the community of believers, which from week to week continues to plead: 'Come, Lord Jesus'."
​-Homily, Epiphany of the Lord, January 6, 2017 

“By her motherhood, Mary shows us that humility and tenderness are not virtues of the weak but of the strong. She teaches us that we do not have to mistreat others in order to feel important (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 288). To celebrate Mary as Mother of God and our mother at the beginning of the new year means recalling a certainty that will accompany our days: we are a people with a Mother; we are not orphans.  Celebrating the feast of the Holy Mother of God makes us smile once more as we realize that we are a people, that we belong, that only within a community, within a family, can we as persons find the “climate”, the “warmth” that enables us to grow in humanity, and not merely as objects meant to “consume and be consumed”. To celebrate the feast of the Holy Mother of God reminds us that we are not interchangeable items of merchandise or information processors. We are children, we are family, we are God’s People. “
-Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, January 1, 2017

10 New Year’s Resolutions from Pope Francis!
1. “Take care of your spiritual life, your relationship with God, because this is the backbone of everything we do and everything we are.”
2. “Take care of your family life, giving your children and loved ones not just money, but most of all your time, attention and love.”

3. “Take care of your relationships with others, transforming your faith into life and your words into good works, especially on behalf of the needy.”


4. “Be careful how you speak, purify your tongue of offensive words, vulgarity and worldly decadence.”


5. “Heal wounds of the heart with the oil of forgiveness, forgiving those who have hurt us and medicating the wounds we have caused others.”


6. “Look after your work, doing it with enthusiasm, humility, competence, passion and with a spirit that knows how to thank the Lord.”

 
7. “Be careful of envy, lust, hatred and negative feelings that devour our interior peace and transform us into destroyed and destructive people.” 
8. “Watch out for anger that can lead to vengeance; for laziness that leads to existential euthanasia; for pointing the finger at others, which leads to pride; and for complaining continually, which leads to desperation.” 
9. “Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker … the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.”
10. “Making sure your Christmas is about Jesus and not about shopping.”

Read the full article from Word on Fire by Bishop Robert Barron here.

"To say thank you is a medicine against bouts of hopelessness, which is a contagious ailment... To say thank you is to nurture hope, the Pope continued, and hope is the ‘fuel’ of Christian life that allows us to go forward every day."
​-To families and staff of Rome’s ‘Bambino Gesù’ Children’s Hospital, Dec 15, 2016