The morning of October 15, 2025, in Rome, Leo XIV greeted a joyful group of Augustinian Recollect Sisters from Mexico and proposed something simple and demanding all at once: Walk by two roads — mercy and truth — and you will find the God who is both your journey and your destination.
Drawing on the Augustinian tradition through St. Thomas of Villanova, the Pope echoed an insight that still startles modern ears: God is not one thing and his reward another; God himself is the reward. That single line reframes religious life — and ordinary life, too. If God is the goal, then holiness isn’t a prize apart from God, but a deeper belonging to the One who already seeks us.
Leo’s map for getting there is thoroughly Augustinian. He pairs the Gospel sisters Martha and Mary with the Psalmist’s claim that “all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth” (Psalms 25:10, in the Hebrew Bible). The two roads are not rivals. Mercy looks like Martha’s service; truth looks like Mary’s listening at Jesus’ feet. Contemplation without service grows thin; service without contemplation forgets why it serves. The saint of Hippo would approve: our hearts are made for God, and they find rest and vigor when love and truth move together.
Then comes the surprise — what St. Thomas of Villanova calls “the delightful way of love.” According to the Pope’s citation, the road to God is not primarily heavy labor but the gift of loving God and neighbor. “What is easier, more pleasant than to love?” he quotes. That doesn’t mean discipleship is effortless; it means the deepest energy of the Christian life is received, not manufactured. Charity is fire, not a box to check.
Here Leo speaks to anyone who has ever tried to “earn” holiness. God, he says with St. Thomas, may give many things, but if he does not give his love, he has given less than himself. So the true measure of our actions is not quantity but charity. The Catechism agrees: “Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for love of God” (CCC 1822). In other words, love is not a garnish; it is the meal.
This has crisp consequences. Works without love become “a burden for the soul.” But where love burns, even long days and hidden sacrifices become light. That line can hearten anyone — consecrated or lay, believer or seeker — who wonders whether small, faithful tasks matter. They do, if (according to the noted Augustinian remark) love is their weight.
Fittingly, the Pope closed with Mary under the title Our Mother of Good Counsel and with St. Thomas of Villanova, a missionary heart who cherished the Americas. Counsel for the road; a companion for the road; and a destination who is also the road Himself.
For the Sisters—and for us—Leo XIV’s Augustinian counsel is practical: ask for love, walk in mercy, sit in truth, and let God be both path and prize. The way is given. The way is Love.
