Pope Francis: ‘The Church advances through prayer’

Vatican City, Feb 27, 2019 / 03:11 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that evil is limited compared to the expanding force of God’s holiness in the world.

“Evil’s days are numbered. Evil is not eternal,” Pope Francis said in a departure from his prepared remarks in St. Peter’s Square Feb. 27.

“God’s holiness is an expanding force, and we beg that it quickly shatters barriers of our world,” he said, adding that this holiness “spreads in concentric circles, like when throwing a stone into a pond.”

Pope Francis explained that “prayer drives away all fear. The Father loves us, the Son raises his arms side by side with ours, the Spirit works in secret for the redemption of the world.”

“One thing is certain: it is evil that is afraid,” the pope said.

In a continuation of his weekly catechesis on the “Our Father” prayer, Pope Francis reflected on the line, “Hallowed be Thy name” at the general audience.

In the words, “Hallowed be Thy name,” he said, “you can feel all the admiration of Jesus for the beauty and the greatness of the Father, and the desire that all recognize him and love him for what he really is.”

“At the same time there is the supplication that his name is sanctified in us, in our family, in our community, in the whole world. It is God who sanctifies us, who transforms us with his love, but at the same time we too are the ones who, through our witness, manifest the holiness of God in the world, making his name present,” Francis said.

God is a mystery to us, but we are not one to him, the pope reminded Catholics. “When we talk to God, we do not do it to reveal to Him what we have in our hearts: He knows it much better than ourselves,” he said.

Pope Francis said that the “Our Father” prayer is easily divided into seven subgroups; the first three have God the Father at the center and the other four focus on our human needs.

“In the first part Jesus makes us enter into his desires, all addressed to the Father: ‘hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done;’ in the second it is He who enters into us and becomes the interpreter of our needs for daily bread, the forgiveness of sins, help in temptation, and liberation from evil,” he said.

He continued, “Here is the matrix of every Christian prayer – I would say of every human prayer – which is always made, on the one hand of contemplation of God, of his mystery, of his beauty and goodness, and, on the other of a sincere and courageous request of what we need to live, and live well.”

“The first step in Christian prayer is therefore the surrender of ourselves to God, to his providence,” Pope Francis said. “It is like saying: ‘Lord, You know everything, there is no need for me to tell you of my pain, I only ask you to stay here beside me: you are my hope.’”

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Vatican City, Nov 26, 2018 / 10:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a meeting with seminarians Saturday, Pope Francis said it is necessary for priests to maintain an open and filial discussion with their bishop, since he is the unifying figure of the diocese.

“You cannot be a good priest without a filial dialogue with the bishop. This is something non-negotiable,” the pope said in the Vatican’s Consistory Hall.

“As someone likes to say, ‘No, I am an employee of the Church.’ You are wrong,” he continued. “Here there is a bishop, there is not an assembly where the position is negotiated. There is a father who unifies: like Jesus wanted things. A father who unifies.”

Pope Francis set aside his prepared speech during a Nov. 24 meeting with seminarians of the Diocese of Agrigento, in order to, he said, “speak a little spontaneously,” on the relationship between a diocesan priest and his bishop.

The bishop “is not the owner of a company;” he is not “the one who commands” while some obey, others pretend to obey, and still others do nothing, Francis said. “No, the bishop is the father, he is fruitful, he is the one who generates the mission.”

He noted that the term “mission” is a loaded one, signifying the will of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, advising seminarians to “learn to see in the bishop the father who was there to help you grow, to move forward and to accompany you in the moments of your apostolate.”

Whether the bishop is there “in beautiful moments, in bad moments,” he said, “but to accompany you always; in moments of success, in the moments of defeat you always have in life… This is something very, very important.”

The pope said the only way this accompaniment can happen, is if priests have a relationship with their bishop; that he knows them as they are, with their own virtues and faults, personalities, and ways of feeling and thinking.

Since it is the bishop who gives the priests of his diocese their parish or other assignment, Pope Francis emphasized the importance of the bishop knowing his priests, so he can make the right choice in the mission he assigns.

But do not meddle in the bishop’s decision, he warned. “Leave the bishop to sort it out: to organize [things] in the Spirit.”

He emphasized that this is not the same as arranging things into an “organizational chart,” though sometimes the Church may use organizational tools for functionality. “But the Church goes beyond the organizational chart, it is another thing: it is life, life ‘sorted’ in the Holy Spirit.”

The pope also made an analogy between the men in formation for the priesthood and the clay pot, which if not right, the potter can reshape or remake – but only before the clay has been baked.

The seminary is a time of training, he explained, and if they have a disagreement about something or do not understand, they should express it appropriately to the rector. “This is important, to say what you feel,” he advised.

This is so that they each can be truly become “a vessel full of grace,” he said, warning that if they “stay silent and do not talk, do not say your difficulties, do not tell your apostolic anxieties and all you want, a silent man, once ‘baked,’ cannot be changed.”

“And all life is like this,” he continued. “It is true that sometimes it is not pleasant for the potter to intervene decisively, but it is for your own good. Let yourself be trained, let yourself be formed.”

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Vatican City, Mar 20, 2020 / 05:03 pm (CNA).- The pontifical science academies issued a health statement Friday encouraging world leaders to make adjustments to short- and long-term responses to the coronavirus.

The statement was released March 20 by … […]