Madrid – Next Sunday, 6 March, “Latin-American Day” with this year’s theme “Prophets of Marcy”, is promoted by the Missions Commission of the Spanish Catholic Bishops’ Conference and OCSHA . To mark the annual Day, representatives of local Churches of Latin America and Spain meet to discuss activities aimed at intensifying communion, collaboration and solidarity between these closely connected peoples and nations. It is also a day to remember all Spanish missionaries in Latin America. According to information issued for the occasion today 970 Spanish fidei donum priests are on missionary service in Latin America. Toledo is the Spanish diocese with the highest number of missionaries in Latin America, Fides learns. “Today, the report says, we express and renew our gratitude to the 31 priests from Toledo serving the Church in Latin American countries, those who are members of OCSHA, and all Spanish, sisters and brothers, priests and lay persons Fidei Donum missionaries for the evangelisation of those lands. Since 1959, on this day of special celebration we remember the numerous missionaries with prayers and church communion made explicit in cooperation among the local Churches ” the note concludes. Link correlati : Materiale per la celebrazione della Giornata:…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis says the Church has no need for “blood” money that derives from exploitation of people; what it needs is that the hearts of faithful be open to God’s mercy.
Speaking to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly General Audience, the Pope’s catechesis was inspired by the Holy Year of Mercy and he reflected on God’s fatherly love and forgiveness.
When God’s children err in their ways, the Pope said, God calls out to them lovingly and never disowns them.
“The most evil of men, the most evil of women, and the most evil of peoples are His children” he said.
The Lord never disowns us; he always calls us to be close to Him. This – the Pope said – is the love of our Father, the mercy of God.
“To have a Father like this gives us hope and trust” he said.
And commenting on the fact that “when a person is sick he turns to the doctor; when he feels he has sinned” Francis said: “he must turn to God – because if he turns to the witchdoctor he will not be healed”.
Pointing out that “we often choose to tread the wrong paths in search of a justification, justice, and peace” Pope Francis said that these are gifts that are bestowed upon us by the Lord if we choose the right path and turn to Him.
“I think of some benefactors of the Church, who come with an offer for the Church and their offer is the fruit of the blood of people who have been exploited, enslaved with work which was under-payed” he said.
“I will tell these people to please take back their cheques. The People of God don’t need their dirty money but hearts that are open to the mercy of God” he said.
Reflecting on how the prophet Isaiah presents God in the Scriptures, he said that this fatherly love of the Lord also involves correction, a summons to conversion and the renewal of the Covenant.
If he chastises his people, the Pope said, it is to move them to repentance and conversion, and in his mercy, he asks them to turn back to him with all their hearts and to receive a righteousness that is itself his gift.
“Though our sins be like scarlet, he will make them white as snow” he said.
And with a special thought and mention for the many refugees who are attempting to enter Europe and do not know where to go, Pope Francis invited the faithful to be open, during this year of grace, to our heavenly Father’s merciful invitation to come back to him and to experience this miracle of his love and forgiveness.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican on Tuesday morning. In remarks to the faithful following the readings of the day, the Holy Father spoke on the season of Lent as a privileged time in which to prepare our hearts to receive God’s forgiveness and to forgive our neighbors in turn, forgetting the faults of others.
The Holy Father’s address focused on God’s infinite capacity for forgiveness as a perfection of his nature, which contrasts sharply with the inability of fallen human nature to make even the slightest concession to its own frailty.
Without memory
Taking as his starting point the Gospel account of Peter’s well-known question to Jesus regarding how many times we are to forgive a brother who has sinned against us – seventy times seven times (cf. Mt. 18:22) – and the account from the 1 st reading of the young Azaria, sentenced to death in a furnace for refusing to worship a golden idol, who, from the flames of the fiery furnace invokes God’s mercy for the people at the same time as he implores forgiveness for himself (cf. Dn. 3:25,33-43), the Holy Father offered the young Azaria’s prayer as an especially apt illustration of the way we ought to trust in the goodness and mercy of the Lord:
“When God forgives, his forgiveness is so great that it is as though God forgets. Quite the opposite of what we do, as we chatter: ‘But so-and-so did such-and-such,’ and we have the complete histories of many people, don’t we? From antiquity through their Middles Ages, their modernity, and even down to their present – and we do not forget. Why? Because we do not have a merciful heart. ‘Do with us with us according to your clemency,’ says this young Azaria ‘according to Thy great mercy Save us.’ It is an appeal to the mercy of God, that He might give us forgiveness and salvation and forget our sins.”
The equation of forgiveness
In the Gospel passage, explaining to Peter that we must always forgive, Jesus tells the parable of the two debtors, the first who gets a pardon from his master, while owing him a huge fortune, and who even shortly afterward was himself unable to be as merciful with another, who owed him only a small sum:
“In the Our Father we pray: ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ It is an equation: the two sides go together. If you are not able to forgive, how will God forgive you? He wants to forgive you, but He will not if you have closed hearts, where mercy cannot enter. ‘But, Father, I forgive, but I cannot forget the bad turn that so-and-so did me …’. Well, ask the Lord to help you to forget. That, however, is another matter. We can forgive, but we cannot always forget. Sometimes we say, ‘I forgive you,’ when we mean, ‘you’ll pay me later’. This, never: forgive as God forgives – to the utmost.”
Mercy which “forgets”
Pope Francis went on to stress that mercy, compassion, forgiveness, repeated the Pope, are most Godly, and recalled that heartfelt pardon given and received is always an act of Divine mercy:
“May Lent prepare our hearts to receive God’s forgiveness – but let us receive it and then do the same with others: forgive heartily. Perhaps you never even greet me in the street, but in my heart I have forgiven you. In this way, we get closer to this thing so great, so Godly, which is mercy. Forgiving, we open our hearts so that God’s mercy might come and forgive us, for, we all have need of pardon, need to ask forgiveness. Let us forgive, and we shall be forgiven. Let us have mercy on others, and we shall feel that mercy of God, who, when He forgives, [also] ‘forgets.’”
(from Vatican Radio)…