Catholics, Muslims pray at Vatican for September 11 victims

Vatican City, May 13, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Jesus has transformed the human experience of prayer, Pope Francis said at the general audience Wednesday.

Speaking via livestream due to the coronavirus crisis, the pope said May 13 that thanks to Jesus, Christians can approach God without fear, addressing him as “Father.”

“Christianity has banished from the bond with God any ‘feudal’ relationship. In the heritage of our faith there are no expressions such as subjection, slavery or vassalage; rather words such as covenant, friendship, promise, communion, closeness,” he said.

In his address from the library of the Apostolic Palace, the pope continued his cycle of catechesis on prayer, which he began last week. 

He noted that prayer is practiced by “people of every religion, and probably also to those who profess none.” It is born in what spiritual writers call “the heart,” our innermost being.

“To pray, then, in us is not something peripheral. It is not some secondary and marginal faculty of ours, but it is the most intimate mystery of ourselves. It is this mystery that prays,” he said.

Prayer, he continued, leads us beyond ourselves. It is the voice of an “I” searching for a “You”. 

He said: “The prayer of the Christian is born instead from a revelation: the ‘You’ has not remained shrouded in mystery, but has entered into a relationship with us. Christianity is the religion that continuously celebrates the ‘manifestation’ of God, that is, his epiphany.” 

He reflected on Jesus’ speech to his disciples at the Last Supper in which he addresses them as “friends,” saying: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you” (John 15:16).

The pope commented: “But this is a blank cheque: ‘Whatever you ask of my Father in my name, I give you’!” 

“God is the friend, the ally, the bridegroom. In prayer, one can establish a relationship of confidence with Him, so much so that in the ‘Our Father’ Jesus taught us to ask Him a series of questions,” he said. 

“We can ask God everything, everything; explain everything, tell everything. It does not matter if in our relationship with God we feel at fault: we are not good friends, we are not grateful children, we are not faithful spouses. He continues to love us.”

He noted that Jesus showed this definitively at the Last Supper when he said “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you” (Luke 22:20). 

“In that gesture Jesus anticipates in the Upper Room the mystery of the Cross. God is a faithful ally: if men stop loving, He continues to love, even if love leads him to Calvary. God is always close to the door of our heart and waits for us to open it to him,” he said.

“And sometimes he knocks on the heart, but he is not intrusive: he waits. God’s patience with us is the patience of a father, of one who loves us so much. I’d say, it’s the patience of a father and a mother together. Always close to our heart, and when he knocks, he does it with tenderness and with a lot of love.” 

He concluded: “Let’s all try praying like this, entering into the mystery of the Covenant. To put ourselves in prayer in God’s merciful arms, to feel enveloped by that mystery of happiness which is the Trinitarian life, to feel like guests who did not deserve so much honor. And to repeat to God, in the amazement of prayer: is it possible that you know only love?” 

“He does not know hate. He is hated, but He does not know hate. He knows only love. This is the God we pray to. This is the incandescent core of all Christian prayer. The God of love, our Father who awaits and accompanies us.” 

In his greetings to different language groups after his catechesis, the pope noted that May 13 is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, as well as the anniversary of the attempted assassination of St. John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in 1981. 

Addressing Polish Catholics, he said: “In our prayer we ask God, through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for peace for the world, the end of the pandemic, the spirit of penance and our conversion.”

[…]

Vatican City, Apr 4, 2017 / 11:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday Pope Francis spoke about what an ‘integral human development’ looks like, saying that development must include the whole person, both physically and spiritually.

“Development does not consist in having the regulation of more and more goods, for just a material well-being,” he said April 4. “Integrating body and soul also means that no development work can really achieve its purpose if it does not respect the place where God is present to us and speaks to our hearts.”

In Christ “God and man are not divided and separated. God became man to make of human life, both personal and social, a concrete path to salvation,” he reflected.

“So the manifestation of God in Christ – including his acts of healing, liberation, and reconciliation that we are called to propose to the many injured by the roadside – shows the way and the mode of service that the Church intends to offer to the world,” he explained.

“In this sense, the very concept of the person, born and matured in Christianity, helps to pursue a fully human development.”

Pope Francis spoke April 4 in the Vatican’s Synod Hall to participants in a conference hosted by the
Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The April 3-4 conference, held in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio, on the development of peoples, aimed to discuss the question: “who is man?”

“What does that mean, today and in the near future, integral development, i.e. development of every person and of the whole man?” Pope Francis asked, borrowing the words of his predecessor in Populorum Progressio.

Specifically, Francis said, in the use of the word “integrate,” we can find “a fundamental orientation for the new dicastery,” which was established Jan. 1 of this year.

One major integration that has largely been lost, he said, is that of community and the individual. Especially in the West, we have “exalted the individual until they become like an island, as if one can be happy alone,” he said.

On the other hand, there are “ideological views and political powers have crushed the person,” he said, taking away their personal liberty.

But “the self and the community are not in competition with each other,” he said. They should work together, because it is only within the context of authentic relationships that the “self is able to mature.”

“This applies even more to the family, which is the first cell of society and where we learn to live together,” he said.

The Pope said another form of integration we can improve is the solidarity between those who have too much and those who have nothing.

In considering social integration, we must remember that “everyone has a contribution to offer the whole of society,” he said, “no one is excluded from making something for the good of all. This is both a right and a duty.”

He said another essential aspect for this improved development is integration of the different systems: the economy, finance, labor, culture, family life, and religion.

“None of them can be free-standing and none of them can be excluded from a concept of integral human development,” he said, this is taking “into account that human life is like an orchestra that sounds good if the different instruments agree and follow a score shared by all.”

“The Church never tires of offering this wisdom and her work to the world, in the awareness that integral development is the way of goodness that the human family is called to tread,” the Pope concluded.

“I encourage you to pursue this action with patience and perseverance, trusting that the Lord is with us.”

[…]

Pope Francis delivers his Angelus address at the Vatican, Dec. 8, 2021. / Vatican Media.

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2021 / 05:45 am (CNA).
Pope Francis highlighted “the beauty of Mary’s heart” in his Angelus address on the Solemnity of the Immaculate… […]