“Contemplatives…..are carrying out an important service to mankind. These prophetic men and women are like sentinels. They are witnesses of hope that daylight is coming. They have put God at the center of their lives, and they carry in their hearts and in their prayer the joys and hopes, the difficulties and sufferings of mankind. They thus show that they are at all times in profound communion with mankind. Led by the Holy Spirit, they strive to see people and events as God sees them (cf. José Rodriguez Carbolla in L’Osservatore Romano, November 30, 2013, p. 8). And each day, they offer prayers and sacrifices to beg God to have mercy on the world, to forgive men their offense, and to give them that peace which they cannot give themselves. Those people are therefore mistaken who imagine that contemplatives are a waste or that they are irrelevant to the needs of the world.” ~Francis Cardinal Arinze, Radical Discipleship: Consecrated Life and the Call to Holiness, p. 86