Affirming the Embrace

"What others think or don't think of how much you do does not matter, nor does your judgment of yourself. All that matters is that mercy has taken you for ever, from the origin of your existence. Mercy called you to love, because mercy loved you.

"Holiness means always affirming -- before everything else, in everything else -- the embrace of the Father, the merciful, pitying movement of Christ, his gesture, that is he himself, independent of everything that stirs and has the appearance of life in us" (Luigi Giussani, The Psalms, pp. 185-186).