Some Cardinal Robert Sarah quotes from his books:

– God or nothing
– The Power of Silence
– The day is now far spent
– From the depths of our hearts

Some people would like the Church to be transformed after the model of modern democracies. In it the government would be entrusted to the majority. But that would amount to making the Church a human society and not the family founded by God.

In large sectors of the Church, we have lost the sense of God’s objectivity. Each individual starts from his subjective experience and creates for himself a religion that suits him.

In order to accomplish her true task adequately, the Church must constantly renew the effort to detach herself from her tendency towards worldliness and once again to become open towards God.

The silence of the crib, the silence of Nazareth, the silence of the Cross, and the silence of the sealed tomb are one. The silences of Jesus are silences of poverty, humility, self-sacrifice, and abasement; it is the bottomless abyss of his kenosis, his self-emptying (Phil 2:7).

In his encyclical Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI correctly recalls that “Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies. It is not a means of changing the world ideologically, and it is not at the service of worldly stratagems, but it is a way of making present here and now the love which man always needs” (DCE 31). And the source of this love is God himself. We must reflect theologically on charity so as to prevent Catholic charitable agencies from falling into secularism. The nature of the Church is in the love of God, and the charity of the Church is in the first place the charity of God.

The modern world and even some clerics, inebriated by their feeling of power, often think that cloistered monks and nuns serve no purpose. Ultimately, that is the noblest compliment we can offer the contemplatives who have withdrawn behind the high walls of their cloisters; they serve nothing in particular here below, but simply God alone. This is the simple, beautiful secret of their prayers, which support the whole world.

There is a sort of glory of silence. Saint Ignatius of Loyola did not hesitate to write in his Spiritual Exercises: “The more the soul is in solitude and seclusion, the more fit it renders itself to approach and be united with its Creator and Lord.

The combat against evil plays out over time, and it is important to persevere and not to lose hope. God is fashioning hearts, and evil never has the last word. In the darkest night, God works in silence.

In large sectors of the Church, we have lost the sense of God’s objectivity. Each individual starts from his subjective experience and creates for himself a religion that suits him.

Let us look at the hands of the Crucified. Our hands, like his, must be pierced so as to keep and to hold nothing greedily. Our heart, like his, must be open so that everyone finds welcome and refuge there… let us look at the Cross. It is the only book that will give us the true meaning of it… Only the Cross will teach us to ‘love to the end.

The modern world and even some clerics, inebriated by their feeling of power, often think that cloistered monks and nuns serve no purpose. Ultimately, that is the noblest compliment we can offer the contemplatives who have withdrawn behind the high walls of their cloisters; they serve nothing in particular here below, but simply God alone. This is the simple, beautiful secret of their prayers, which support the whole world.