Praising pro-life efforts, Pope Francis addresses pilgrims from hospital

Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley attends a press conference to present the first report of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on Oct. 29, 2024, at the Vatican. / Credit: TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images

Vatican City, Oct 29, … […]

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2017 / 07:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis reflected on Jesus’ command to love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself, saying that it is in the Eucharist that we receive the grace to carry this out.

“God, who is Love, has created us to make us part of his life, to be loved and to love Him, and to love all other people with Him. This is God’s ‘dream’ for man. And in order to accomplish it we need his grace, we need to receive in us the ability to love that comes from God himself.”

For this reason “Jesus offers himself to us in the Eucharist…” the Pope said Oct. 29. “In it we receive his Body and His Blood, that is, we receive Jesus in the best expression of his love, when He has offered himself to the Father for our salvation.”

Pope Francis reflected on Sunday’s “short, but very important” Gospel passage from St. Matthew in his brief message before leading the Angelus with around 30,000 people in St. Peter’s Square.

In the Gospel passage, a Pharisee asks Jesus what, among the more than 600 Jewish laws, is the greatest. And Jesus, not hesitating at all, answers: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Ten Commandments, which were communicated directly to Moses by God, are a covenant with the people. And in his answer, “Jesus wants to make it clear that without love of God and neighbor there is no true fidelity to this covenant with the Lord,” the Pope pointed out.

In answering this question, Jesus is trying to help the Pharisees understand the proper order and importance of things, and how all other laws depend on these two.

“What Jesus proposes on this evangelical page is a wonderful ideal that corresponds to the most authentic desire of our heart,” he said. “In fact, that we have been created to love and to be loved.”

Francis emphasized that we can do many good things, follow all the laws, but if we do not have love it is useless. This is how Jesus lived his life: preaching and performing works always with what is “essential, that is, love.”

“Love gives momentum and fecundity to life and to the journey of faith: without love, both life and faith remain sterile.”

In fact, even if we have known the commandment to love from the time we were children, we must never stop trying to conform ourselves to this law, putting it into practice in whatever situation we find ourselves in, he concluded.

And as we try to live out this commandment to love, we can turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary for help, he said: The Holy Virgin helping us “to welcome into our lives the ‘great commandment’ of love of God and of neighbor.”

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Pope Francis during his appearance for the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square on June 29, 2022, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. / Vatican Media

Vatican City, Jun 29, 2022 / 08:40 am (CNA).

The journey of faith is never easy for anyone, not even for the Apostles Peter and Paul, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address on Wednesday.

“The journey of faith is not a walk in the park, but is instead demanding, sometimes arduous,” he said on June 29.

The pope prayed a mid-week Angelus to mark the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the patron saints of the city of Rome.

In his message before the Marian prayer, he reflected on a passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew, when Peter says to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“It is a profession of faith, which Peter pronounces not on the basis of his human understanding, but because God the Father inspired it in him,” he said.

When Jesus then reveals to his disciples that he will suffer, die, and on the third day be raised, Peter rebukes him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

Pope Francis recalled that Jesus’ response to Peter was: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a scandal to me, because you do not think according to God, but according to men!” 

“Does not the same thing happen to us?” the pope said. “We repeat the Creed, we say it with faith, but when faced with the harsh trials of life, everything seems to falter.”

“We are inclined to protest to the Lord,” Francis added, “telling him that it is not right, that there must be other, more direct, less strenuous ways.”

St. Peter needed time to mature, moving from first horror at the cross to a courageous embrace of his own death, he said, noting that “the Apostle Paul also had his own path, and he too passed through a slow maturation of faith, experiencing moments of uncertainty and doubt.”

“The journey of faith is never a walk in the park, for anyone, not for Peter nor for Paul, not for any Christian,” he said. 

The pope concluded his message with two questions for reflection.

“In the light of this experience of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, each of us can ask ourselves: When I profess my faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, do I do so with the awareness that I must always be learning, or do I assume that I ‘already have it all figured out’?” he said.

“And again,” he continued, “in difficulties and trials do I become discouraged, do I complain, or do I learn to make them an opportunity to grow in trust in the Lord? For he, in fact — as Paul writes to Timothy — delivers us from all evil and brings us safely to heaven.”

The pope addressed an estimated 15,000 people from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, according to the Vatican. During the Angelus and his remarks afterward, he sometimes placed his right hand on the windowsill and leaned his weight on his right arm.

The 85-year-old pope, who has an injury in his right knee, has used a wheelchair for many of his public audiences for almost two months. He has recently walked short distances with the support of a cane.

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