The Proclamation
of the Gospel in Today’s World.
Pope Francis
Some of my
quotes from the Exhortation
Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in our
own concerns there is no room for others.
God never tires of forgiving us - we tire of seeking
His mercy.
No one can strip us of the dignity bestowed upon us by
this unfailing love
The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross,
constantly invites us to rejoice.
Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures – for
when all is said and done we are infinitely loved.
Benedict XVI said “Being a Christian is not the result
of an ethical or lofty choice- but the encounter with a person.”
To this encounter with God we are liberated from our
narrowness or self-absorption.
If we have received God’s love how can we fail to
share that love with others?
If we wish to live a dignified and fulfilling life, we
have to reach out to others.
The Gospel offers us the chance to live life on a higher
plane.
Life grows by being given away, and it weakens in
isolation and comfort.
An evangelizer must never look like someone who has
just come back from a funeral.
To make the effort and to recover the original
freshness of the Gospel is our goal.
The joy of evangelizing always arises from grateful
remembrance.
What counts above all else is “Faith working through
love.”
Works of love directed to one’s neighbor are the most
perfect external manifestation of the interior grace of the spirit.
In itself mercy is the greatest of the virtues since
all others revolve around it.
There is an imbalance when we talk more about
·
Law
than about grace
·
More
about the Church than about Christ
·
More
about the Pope than about God’s word.
Each truth is better understood when related to the
harmonious totality of the Christian message.
All of the truths are important and illume one
another.
Christian morality is not a form of
·
Stoicism
·
Self-denial
·
Practical
philosophy
·
Or
a catalog of faults and sins.
The Gospel invites us to respond to the God who loves
us and saves us.
The deposit of faith is one thing –the way it is
expressed is another.
Faith always remains something of a cross
All religious teaching has to be reflected in the
teacher’s way of life.
The precepts which Christ and the apostles gave to the
people of God are very few. St. Thomas Aquinas
God’s mercy has willed that we should be free.
Everyone needs to be touched by the comfort and
attraction of
God’s saving love.
A Church which “goes forth” is a Church whose doors
are open.
Often it is better to slow down.
It is better to put aside our eagerness in order to
see and listen to others.
It is better to stop rushing from one thing to another
and to remain with someone who has fallen along the way.
The Church is called to be the house of the Father
with doors always wide open.
The Church must first, go to the poor and the sick,
the despised and overlooked, “Those who cannot repay you.”
I prefer a Church bruised and dirty because it has
been out in the streets.
In our time it is a turning point in history.
Lack of respect for others and violence is on the
rise.
We also have to say, “Thou shalt not” to an economy of
exclusion and inequality.
We have created a disposable culture which is now
spreading.
The culture of prosperity deadens us.
The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in
a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money.
Man is reduced to one of his needs alone: Consumption.
We need to look at our city with a contemplative gaze.
The pain and the shame we feel at the sins of some
members of the Church and at our own must never make us forget how many
Christians are giving their lives in love.
I am aware that we need to crate spaces where pastoral
workers can be helped and healed.
Three evils which fuel each other
1. A heightened individualism
2. A crisis in identity
3. A cooling of fervor.
We are falling into seeking to avoid any
responsibility that may take away from our free time.
A tomb psycho9logy develops and slowly transforms
Christians into mummies in a museum.
The evils of the world and those of the Church must
not be excuses for diminishing our commitment and our fervor.
One of the more serious temptations is defeatism which
turns us into “sourpusses.”
The Christian ideal is
·
To
overcome suspicion
·
Habitual
mistrust
·
Fear
of losing our privacy
·
Defensive
attitudes which today’s world imposes on us.
Spiritual worldliness hides behind the appearance of piety.
Evils of Spiritual worldliness
1. Ostentatious preoccupation for the
liturgy
2. For doctrine
3.
For
the church’s prestige
There should be no warring among ourselves because of
envy or jealousy.
Radiate a witness of fraternal communion/
Let everyone admire how you care for one another.
Let us ask the Lord to help us understand the law of
love.
The reservation to males, as a sign of Christ the
spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist is not a question open to discussion.
Indeed, a woman, Mary, is more important than a
Bishop.
The Church is a mystery rooted in the Trinity, yet she
exists in History for us as a model.
The Church’s ultimate foundation is found in the free
and gracious initiative of God.
The salvation which God has wrought and the Church
joyfully proclaims is for everyone.
We have to bring the Gospel to the people we meet.
The biblical text is the basis of our preaching.
The Church, guided by the Gospel of mercy and love for
us, hears the cry for justice and intends to respond to it with all its might.
Sadly, human rights can be used as a justification for
an inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer people.
We incarnate the duty of hearing the cry of the poor
when we are deeply moved by the suffering of others.
St. Paul was approached by the apostles- the key
criterion of authenticity which they presented was that “he should not forget
the poor.”
God’s heart has a special place for the poor.
For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily a
theological one rather than cultural, sociological or a political one.
God shows the poor, “His first mercy.”
Our commitment does not consist exclusively in
activities etc. but above all in an attentiveness which considers the other as
one with ourselves.
The poor person, when loved, “is esteemed as of great
value.
Any Church community without helping the poor to live
with dignity will drift into a spiritual worldliness camouflaged by religious
practices, unproductive meetings and empty talks.
Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to
care with particular love and concern are unborn children.
The Church cannot be expected to change her position
on the abortion question
We are also steward of creation as a whole.
Let us not leave in our wake a swath of destruction
and death which will affect our lives and those of future generations.
Small yet strong in the love of God, like Saint
Francis of Assisi, all of us as Christians are called to watch over and protect
the fragile world in which we live and all its peoples.
It is the willingness to face conflict head on, to
resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process, “Blessed are
the peacemaker.”
Our ethnic diversity is our wealth.
Realities are greater than ideas.
This rejects the various means of making reality.
We have politicians and religious leaders who wonder
why people do not understand them and follow them because they are stuck in the
realm of pure ideas and reducing faith or politics to rhetoric.
The global need not stifle nor the particular local
prove barren.
The Church calls every baptized person to be a
peacemaker
Through an exchange of gifts with other Christians the
Spirit can lead us more fully into truth and goodness.
The Church which shares with Jews an important part of
the
Sacred Scripture looks upon the people of the covenant and their Faith as one
of the sacred roots of our own Christian identity.
Interreligious dialogue is a necessary condition for
peace in the world.
The respect due to the agnostic or non-believing minority
should not be arbitrary imposed in a way that silences the convictions of the
believing majority.
We need to recover a contemplative spirit to realize
that we have been entrusted with a treasure which makes us more human and helps
us to lead a new life.
A person who is not convinced of their faith is
enthusiastic, certain, an in love, will convince nobody.
Intercessory prayer does not divert us from true
contemplation since authentic contemplation always has a place for others.
Intercessory prayer becomes a prayer of gratitude to
God for others. It is constant
thankfulness.
The great men and women of God were great
intercessors.
Intercession is like a leaven in the heart of the
Trinity.
God’s heart is touched by out intercession, yet in reality
He is always there first.
Isaac of Stella says.” In the inspired scriptures,
what is said in a universal sense of the virgin mother, the Church, is
understood in an individual sense of the Virgin Mary….In a way every Christian
is also believed to be a bride of God’s word, a mother of Christ.”
