Comfort the weak hands and strengthen the feeble knees. Say to the fainthearted, 'Be of good cheer and fear not... God himself will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The crippled will leap like the hart and the tongue of the dumb will be loosed, waters will gush forth in the desert and streams in the wilderness. And that which was dry shall be turned into a pool, and the thirsty land into fountains of water2. With the Lord all good things have come to us.
The Messiah is very close to us, and in these days of Advent we prepare ourselves to receive him in a new way when Christmas comes. Jesus says especially in these days: Comfort the weak hands and strengthen the feeble knees.
Say to the fainthearted: Be of good cheer and do not be afraid.... And every day we meet more and more friends, colleagues, relatives, disoriented in the most essential aspects of their existence. They feel unable to go to the Lord, and they walk like paralytics on the roads of life because they have lost hope.
For this, we must know the way; have an interior life, a relationship with Jesus, go ahead to improve in those things that our friends should improve, and have an unshakable hope in the supernatural means.
Prayer, mortification and example will always be at the basis of every Christian apostolate. The more the petition for others is heard, the more it is protected by the holiness of the one who asks. The apostolate is born of a great love for Christ.
In many cases, to bring our friends closer to Christ is to lead them to receive the sacrament of Penance, one of the greatest gifts that the Lord has left to his Church. There is little, if any, greater help we can give them than that of facilitating their approach to Confession. On some occasions, with gentleness, we will have to help them to make a good examination of conscience; on others, we will accompany them to where they are to go to Confession; at other times a word of encouragement and affection will suffice, together with a brief and accommodating catechesis on the nature and goods of this sacrament. What joy every time we bring a relative, a colleague, a friend closer to the sacrament of divine mercy! This same joy is shared in Heaven3 by our Father God and by all the blessed.
Hablar con Dios