I would like to thank you, Brother Bernardo, for all your help in these days. I was impressed by your efforts to enable us to enter, as the Word did, the human realm; and to understand that God always makes himself present in mankind. He first did so in the Incarnation of the Word, wholly, but He is also present in the traces He leaves in mankind. Likewise, the Incarnation of the Word — indivisible and incontrovertible — is there. And our work is perhaps to go forward....

I thank you very much for your efforts. Thank you for speaking to us about remembrance: this “deuteronomic” dimension that we forget; for speaking to us about hope, work, patience, and for showing us the way to have that “remembrance of the future” which always leads us forth. Thank you!

And it made me laugh when you said that, in reading the titles of the meditations, someone might not have understood what the Curia were doing; perhaps they hired a tour guide who would take them to get acquainted with Florence and its poets.... And in the first meditation, I too was a little disoriented; then I understood the message. Thank you.

I thought a lot about a Council document — Gaudium et spes — it is perhaps the document that has found the most resistance, even today. And in certain moments I have seen you this way: as with the courage of the Council Fathers when they signed that document. I thank you very much. Pray for us, who are all sinners, everyone, but we wish to go forth in this way, serving the Lord. Thank you very much, and convey greetings to the monks on my behalf and that of all of us. Thank you!