Christ wants us walking out on the street wrote Cardinal Bergoglio on Palm Sunday 2008.

The Lord wants us like Him: with an open heart, roaming the streets of Buenos Aires. He wants us walking the streets of Buenos Aires and carrying His message! Like Him, on the road and on the street. He doesn’t want us hoarding His word just for ourselves, locked inside our own hearts, our own house, or in the temple, instead that we spill His word on the street. He wants us walking out on the street.

We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church. It’s true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that’s sick because it’s self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former.”

On this feast Of Louise de Marillac we remember the words of Saint Vincent to the Daughters of Charity. They were to have

for monastery only the houses of the sick,
for cell a hired room,
for chapel the parish church,
for cloister the streets of the city,
for enclosure obedience,
for grill the fear of God,
for veil holy modesty…, and continual confidence in Divine Providence