Let Me Welcome You:

Let me seek and find you, recognize and serve you in all who suffer. Give me the grace, O Savior of the world, to bring your presence even to your enemies and to persist faithfully in witnessing to them even when I find it painful to do so.

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For Christ had been predestined to be the Son of Mary, just as Mary had been predestined to be the Mother of Christ.... For to these three things had Mary been predestined: motherhood, grace, and glory.

- Saint Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619)

God is love, and all his operations proceed from love. Once he wills to manifest that goodness by sharing his love outside himself, then the Incarnation becomes the supreme manifestation of his goodness and love and glory. So, Christ was intended before all other creatures and for his own sake. For him all things were created and to him all things must be subject, and God loves all creatures in and because of Christ. Christ is the first-born of every creature, and the whole of humanity as well as the created world finds its foundation and meaning in him. Moreover, this would have been the case even if Adam had not sinned

- St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Doctor of the Universal Church, Capuchin Educational Conference, Washington, D.C.