A young man walked through the woods, whistling as he went.
Suddenly, he found a small chapel. It was badly dilapidated, its walls almost entirely collapsed.
He entered the chapel. The crucifix still stood where the altar had once been.
The young man felt himself instantly captivated by it.
The crucifix said to him, "Please repair my church."
The young man was a man of action. He went to the quarry in the mountains to cut stone, carried it down the mountain, and began rebuilding the collapsed walls.
No matter how long a journey was, it had a beginning. No matter how glorious a journey was, it might have begun with a coincidence.
So when you felt lost, do not worry. God would not abandon you.
There would be many troubles in our lives. It was unfair to dump them all on the Virgin Mary. Who else would pray for us?
"Isn't it strange?" Bergoglio's memories were still lingering on his last sermon in the slums of Buenos Aires when Martini, the reformist cardinal from Italy, walked up beside him and said, "That we would gather while the Pope is still alive."
Bergoglio looked up at the bronze baldachin of St. Peter's Basilica. Behind it stood the sculpture of St. Peter's Chair, its light shining through the canopy like the gates of The Paradise.
"What hymn were you whistling just now?" Martini continued.
"Dancing Queen," Bergoglio said.
Martini froze.
"ABBA," added the cardinal from South America.
"That's a Swedish rock band," An Linze, the cardinal from Africa, said as he leaned toward the Italian bishop.
"Don't whistle it in front of Ratzinger. Look." Martini watched the dean of the College of Cardinals shaking hands with people in the distance. "He has always been regarded as Pope John Paul II's natural