Pope Francis’ Little Book of Wisdom

First published in 2015 by HarperCollinsPublishers

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

FIRST EDITION

Copyright © 2015 HarperCollinsPublishers Copyright © 2015 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana Compiled by Andrea Kirk Assaf Edited by Tony Assaf Cover design by e-Digital Design Cover photo credit: Pope Francis addresses the crowd on Easter Sunday, 2013 © Alamy.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007947447

Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008139261 Version: 2015-07-21

Take this Gospel and carry it with you, to read it often, every day. Carry it in your purse, in your pocket, read from it often, a passage every day. The Word of God is a light for our path! It will do you well. Do it.

Pope Francis addressing the crowds after the Angelus prayer in St. Peter Square, March 22, 2015, after which homeless men and women distributed pocket-sized Gospels, a new Lenten tradition he began in 2014 to demonstrate that “the ones most in need are the ones who give us the Word of God.”

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

A Note from the Editor

PART ONE: Hope & Joy

PART TWO: Faith & Prayer

PART THREE: The Church & Evangelization

PART FOUR: Love & Truth

PART FIVE: The Journey of Life

PART SIX: Family

PART SEVEN: Building a Better World

PART EIGHT: Listening to God

PART NINE: Humility & Idolatry

PART TEN: Forgiveness & Grace

PART ELEVEN: Human Dignity, Suffering & Solidarity

PART TWELVE: The Lessons of the Cross

About the Editor

About the Publisher

On Palm Sunday this year I happened to mention to an Italian friend that I was compiling quotes of Pope Francis for a small book. Without missing a beat, he recited one of his favorites to me, confiding that he often reads just a sentence or two from one of the Holy Father’s writings or speeches so that he can reflect on it for the rest of the day. He had been wishing for a small volume of selected inspiring quotes by Pope Francis that he could easily carry along with him as he goes about his commute and workday or during moments of leisure.

Sandro, this little book is for you, and for me, and for all who have found something beautiful, inspirational, and wise in the words of Pope Francis. May he continue to teach us and charm us with his surprises, wit, and wisdom for as long as the Lord chooses to bless us with his pontificate. May this little book allow Pope Francis to come along with us on our daily journeys as our confidant, fellow traveler, and guide.

Andrea Kirk Assaf

Easter Sunday 2015 Rome, Italy

Daily contemplation of the Gospel helps us to have true hope. Keeping our gaze fixed on Jesus is the core of hope.

To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope; it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds; it is to bring the warmth of hope!

This is Christian hope: that the future is in God’s hands.

[Y]ou have in your heart a promise of hope. You are bearers of hope. You, in fact, live in the present, but are looking at the future. You are the protagonists of the future, artisans of the future.

[F]reedom and hope go hand in hand … wherever there is no hope, there can be

no freedom.

Do not allow yourselves to be robbed of hope, and carry on! On the contrary, sow hope.

Christ is the one who renews every wonderful thing of creation; He’s the reason of our hope. And this hope does not delude because He is faithful. He can’t renounce Himself. This is the virtue of Hope.

Hope is the most humble of the three theological virtues, for it hides itself in this life.

It’s best to not confuse optimism with hope. Optimism is a psychological attitude toward life. Hope goes further.

Hope is having our hearts anchored to our loved ones, our ancestors, to where the saints are, where Christ is, where God is.

[H]ope is not for one person alone, hope is something we do together! We must keep hope alive together, all of you, and all of us, who are so far away.

There are difficult moments in life, but with hope the soul goes forward and looks ahead to what awaits us.

Anyone exercising a role of leadership—allow me to say, anyone whom life has anointed as a leader—needs to have practical goals and to seek specific means to attain them. At the same time, there is always the risk of disappointment, resentment, and indifference, if our plans and goals do not materialize. Here I would appeal to the dynamic of hope that inspires us to keep pressing on, to employ all our energies and abilities on behalf of those for whom we work, accepting results, making it possible to strike out on new paths, being generous even without apparent results, yet keeping hope alive, with the constancy and courage that comes from accepting a vocation as leader and guide.