(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Tuesday invited all Christians to accept God’s love without being critical and making objections. He was speaking during the homily at morning Mass in the Casa Santa Marta. Taking his cue from the Gospel reading of the day that speaks of how the children of Israel complained against God during…
Read more
In mapping the
journey of evangelization, Pope Francis warns, discerningly, of obstacles on
the way. He cautions about the “dark side” of secularity: the individualism it
breeds, the relativism it propagates, the consumerism it celebrates, the “throw
away” mentality that follows in its wake. Francis also draws on the church’s
teachings on social justice to denounce a rapacious economic system that
produces dehumanizing poverty, both material and cultural, for many. But Francis also bluntly addresses
obstacles to the joyful proclamation of the Gospel that reside within the
church itself. Among these he lists the lack of a truly collegial sharing of
gifts and a clericalism motivated more by power-seeking than service of the
Gospel. And his discernment probes deeper still. The Pope frequently warns of a
“worldly spirituality” that has lost its anchor in Christ and the Spirit and
drifts aimlessly. Too often we permit others to set the agenda rather than
allow Christ and his Gospel to direct our undertakings. He laments: At times our media culture and some
intellectual circles convey a marked skepticism
with regard to the Church’s message, along with a certain cynicism. As a consequence, many pastoral workers,
although they pray, develop a sort of inferiority
complex which leads them to relativize or conceal their Christian identity and convictions. This produces
a vicious circle. They end up being unhappy
with who they are and what they do; they do not identify with their mission of evangelization and this weakens
their commitment. They end up stifling
the joy of mission with a kind of obsession about being like everyone else and possessing what everyone else possesses.
Their work of evangelization thus becomes
forced, and they devote little energy and very limited time to it (79). The only remedy for such alienation
is conversion: turning again to the person of Jesus Christ and to the joy of
encounter with him. Thus the Pope writes: “I invite all Christians, everywhere,
at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at
least an openness to letting him encounter them. I ask all of you to do this
unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for
him or her, since “no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord” (3). Francis reiterates here what he has
often stressed in homilies and talks: the heart of the Gospel is mysticism more
than moralism. Of course, Christians must come to the aid of the poor and
oppressed. They must be concerned about environmental degradation and religious
intolerance and persecution. But this moral sensibility flows from a compelling
and sustaining vision: the vision of the Lord who was crucified for our
justification and raised to life for our salvation. Ultimately, the love of
Jesus impels us. So Francis writes: “The primary reason for evangelizing is the
love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges
us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not
feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point
him out, to make him known? If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently
that he will once more touch our hearts. We need
to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence” (264). Francis shares with Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI the conviction that the evangelical task is to promote a new or
renewed encounter with the Mystery of God in Christ. They both insist that our
communication must be “mystagogical:” leading into a deeper realization of the
inexhaustible Mystery of our saving God. Such communication recognizes the
importance of image and symbol, of art and poetry. It urges evangelizers,
homilists, and theologians to appeal not only to truth and goodness, but to
beauty as well. Francis recommends “a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of
touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen
Christ to radiate within it…. A formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the
faith. Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in
evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the
wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new
“language of parables” (167). The theme of the “newness” of Jesus
Christ permeates Evangelii Gaudium .
The risen Jesus is the heart of the Good News we seek to live and to share.
Pope Francis quotes St Irenaeus: “By his coming, Christ brought with him all
newness”. The Holy Father then comments: “With this newness Jesus is always
able to renew our lives and our communities,
and even if the Christian
message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old…Each time we return to the source
and recover the original
freshness of the Gospel, new paths open – creative methods, different forms of expression, more eloquent signs,
words filled with new meaning for today’s
world. In reality, every authentic act of evangelization is always ‘new’”(11). The reason
evangelizers can venture forth boldly, even to the farthest peripheries, is
that their Center is secure: Jesus Christ “the same, yesterday, today, and
forever” (Heb 13:8). Because the risen Lord is ever new, he makes all things
new. Robert P. Imbelli…
Rome – “Tomorrow we Bishops of the Permanent Council will dedicate a special moment of prayer for the martyrs, missionaries and lay people, of today: we want them to feel the closeness of our love and of our communities, and the overwhelming gratitude for the example of intrepid faith. The blood of martyrs is the…
Read more
Rome – “Tomorrow we Bishops of the Permanent Council will dedicate a special moment of prayer for the martyrs, missionaries and lay people, of today: we want them to feel the closeness of our love and of our communities, and the overwhelming gratitude for the example of intrepid faith. The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians!”. This is what Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference said yesterday afternoon, March 23, in his speech during the opening session of the Permanent Council of CEI. The Cardinal dedicated a considerable part of his speech to the theme of the persecution of Christians: “We cannot but remain painfully astonished before the persecution against Christians that grows and becomes cruel. The world of faith, of common sense, the human world remains baffled and beaten”. Questioning the reasons for the persecution, he said: “One cannot but condemn such barbaric and studied cruelty against minorities, especially against Christians only because Christians. One cannot but condemn crazy and bloody strategies. Religion can never be challenged to kill or do violence”. Finally, he stressed: “While it remains an urgent responsibility to ensure the rights of religious freedom in the world, once again we urge Europe to a serious examination of conscience on the phenomenon of Westerners who enlist in the death squads”….
Vatican City, 22 March 2015 (VIS) – The final stage of the Pope’s visit to Naples yesterday took place on the Caracciolo seafront promenade, where he met with the people of the city. The Holy Father again answered three questions. The first was posed by a young woman who wanted to know how to interpret God’s silence when faced with difficulties such as corruption, and how to respond to this with signs of hope.
“God, our God is a God of words, He is a God of gestures, and He is a God of silence. We know the God of words because in the Bible there are the words of God: God talks to us and seeks us. The God of gestures is the God around us. … And then there is the God of silence. Think of the great silences in the Bible: for instance, the silence in the heart of Abraham when he went to offer his son as a sacrifice. …. But God’s greatest silence was the Cross: Jesus heard his Father’s silence, to the point of defining it as abandonment. … And then there occurred God’s miracle, that word, that grandiose gesture of the Resurrection. Our God is also the God of silence, and there are silences of God’s that cannot be explained if you do not look to the Cross. For example, why do children suffer? Where is there a word from God to explain why children suffer? … I do not say that the silence of God can be ‘understood’, but we can draw nearer to God’s silences by looking upon the crucified Christ, Christ abandoned from the Mount of Olives unto the Cross. … But ‘God created us to be happy’. Yes, it is true. But very often He says nothing. And this is the truth. I cannot deceive you by saying, ‘No, have faith and all will go well, you will be happy, you will have good fortune, you will have money …’. No, our God also remains in silence. Remember: He is the God of words, the God of gestures, and the God of silences, and you have to unite these three things in your life. This is what I can say to you. I am sorry. I have no other ‘recipe’”.
The second question was from an elderly woman, aged 95, who thanked the Pope for his defence of old age, a gift that today’s society does not appreciate or discards, and commented that she had found a Christian community that showed her affection and gave her strength, and which had become like a family to her.
“You used a key word for our culture: ‘discard’. The elderly are discarded, because this society throws away what is no longer useful, what is ‘disposable’. Children are not useful, so why have them? … We discard children, and we discard the elderly, because we leave them by themselves. We elderly have ailments and problems, and we bring problems to others, and people discard us perhaps because of these ailments, because we are no longer useful. And then there is this habit of – excuse the expression – leaving people to die, and since we like using euphemisms, we use a technical word: euthanasia. But euthanasia is carried out not only by injection; there is also a hidden euthanasia, that of no longer giving medicine, of not offering cures, of making life sad, and so one dies, one expires. … But this path that you have found is the best medicine for a long life: closeness, friendship, tenderness. … Solitude is the most potent poison for the elderly. … Sons and daughters, I remind you of the fourth commandment. Are you affectionate with your parents? Do you embrace them, do you tell them you love them? … Examine your consciences. Affection is the best medicine for the elderly”.
Finally, a married couple asked the Pope how best to communicate the beauty of the family, through a pastoral ministry of outreach rather than defence.
“The family is in crisis: this is true, and it is not new”, answered Francis. “Young people do not want to get married, preferring instead to live together, easily and without compromises; then, if a child comes along, they marry out of necessity. … The crisis of the family is a social reality. Then there are the ideological colonisations of the family, modes and proposals from Europe and also from overseas. The error of the human mind that is gender theory creates a lot of confusion. … What can we do, faced with such active secularisation? What can we do with these ideological colonisations? What can be done with a culture that does not consider the family, in which people prefer not to marry? I do not have a recipe: the Church is aware of this and the Lord has inspired the convocation of a Synod on the family, on its many problems. … For example, there is the problem of preparation for marriage. Preparation is not a question of a course: became a married couple in eight lessons. … It is another thing entirely. It begins at home, with friends, with youth, during engagement. Engagement has lost the sacred meaning of respect. Today, normally, engagement and cohabitation are almost the same thing. Not always, as there are good examples. How can we prepare an engagement to mature? It is like fruit. If you do not gather it when it is ripe, it is not good. But all this is a crisis, and I ask you to pray a lot. I have no recipes for this, but the witness of love and the witness of how to resolve problems are important”.
At the end of the meeting, the Pope transferred to the maritime station of Naples in order to depart by helicopter. He arrived in Rome at 7 p.m….