An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better that we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles.

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, para 183

(Ascension of the Lord)

In His solemn prayer for the Church’s unity, Christ Our Lord did not ask His Father to remove His disciples from the world: “I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil.” Let no man therefore imagine that a life of activity in the world is incompatible with spiritual perfection. The two can very well be harmonized.

Pope Saint John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, para 255

The motivating concern for the poor - who are, in the very meaningful term, "the Lord's poor" must be translated at all levels into concrete actions, until it decisively attains a series of necessary reforms. … But those demanded by the situation of international imbalance... must not be forgotten.

Pope Saint John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei Socialis, para 42

(Nearest Sunday to the Feast of St Joseph the Worker / International Workers Day (1st May))

The Book of Genesis tells us that God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it, but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work.

Pope Francis, General Audience, 1/05/2013

Evangelisers thus take on the ‘smell of the sheep’ and the sheep are willing to hear their voice.

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, para 24

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know him in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

Servant of God Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

If you break a computer it is a tragedy, but poverty, the needs, the dramas of so many people end up becoming the norm. … In so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat, that's not news, it seems normal. It cannot be this way!

Pope Francis, General Audience, 5/06/2013

If you want to honour the body of Christ, do not scorn it when it is naked; do not honour the Eucharistic Christ with silk vestments, and then, leaving the church, neglect the other Christ suffering from cold and nakedness.

Saint John Chrysostom 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Luke 4:18–19