Urbi et Orbi: Pope Francis urges world leaders to pursue dialogue, peace in Jubilee Year

Vatican City, Sep 27, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Sunday that the Christian life requires concrete commitments and spiritual combat in order to grow in holiness.

“There is no path to holiness without some renunciation and without spiritual combat,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sept. 27.

This battle for personal sanctity requires grace “to fight for the good, to fight not to fall into temptation, to do what we can on our part, to come to live in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes,” the pope added.

In the Catholic tradition, spiritual combat involves an internal “battle of prayer” in which a Christian must fight temptation, distraction, discouragement, or dryness. Spiritual combat also entails cultivating virtues to make better life choices and exercise charity towards one’s neighbor.

The pope acknowledged that conversion can be a painful process because it is a process of moral purification, which he likened to removing encrustations from one’s heart.

“Conversion is a grace for which we must always ask for: ‘Lord, give me the grace to improve. Give me the grace to be a good Christian,’” Pope Francis said from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

Reflecting on Sunday’s Gospel, the pope said that “living a Christian life is not made up of dreams or beautiful aspirations, but of concrete commitments, in order to open ourselves ever more to God’s will and to love for our brothers and sisters.”

“Faith in God asks us to renew every day the choice of good over evil, the choice of the truth rather than lies, the choice of love for our neighbor over selfishness,” Pope Francis said.

The pope pointed to one of Jesus’ parables in chapter 21 in the Gospel of Matthew in which a father asks two sons to go and work in his vineyard.

“To the father’s invitation to go and work in the vineyard, the first son impulsively responds ‘no, no I will not go,’ but then he repents and goes; instead the second son, who immediately replies ‘yes, yes father,’ does not actually do so,” he said.

“Obedience does not consist of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but of acting, of cultivating the vineyard, of bringing about the Kingdom of God, in doing good.”

Pope Francis explained that Jesus used this parable to call people to an understanding that religion should affect one’s life and attitudes.

“With His preaching on the Kingdom of God, Jesus opposes a religiosity that does not involve human life, that does not question the conscience and its responsibility in the face of good and evil,” he said. “Jesus wants to go beyond a religion understood only as external and habitual practice, which does not affect people’s lives and attitudes.”

While acknowledging that the Christian life demands conversion, Pope Francis emphasized that “God is patient with each one of us.”

“He [God] does not tire, He does not desist after our ‘no’; He leaves us free even to distance ourselves from Him and to make mistakes … But He anxiously awaits our ‘yes’, so as to welcome us anew in His fatherly arms and to fill us with His boundless mercy,” the pope said.

After praying the Angelus with the pilgrims gathered under umbrellas in a rainy St. Peter’s Square, the pope asked people to pray for peace in the Caucasus region, where Russia staged joint military exercises with China, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Armenia last week.

“I ask the parties to the conflict to make concrete gestures of goodwill and brotherhood, which can lead to solving problems not with the use of force and arms, but through dialogue and negotiation,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis also greeted the migrants and refugees present at the Angelus as the Church celebrates the World Day of Migrants and Refugees and said that he was praying for small businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

“May Mary Most Holy help us to be docile to the action of the Holy Spirit. He is the One who melts the hardness of hearts and disposes them to repentance, so we may obtain the life and salvation promised by Jesus,” the pope said.

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Metropolitan Job, the Eastern Orthodox bishop of Pisidia and the permanent representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches, speaks to delegates of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 9, 2023, at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. He is attending the Synod on Synodality as a fraternal delegate. / Credit: Screenshot of Vatican Media livestream

Rome Newsroom, Oct 9, 2023 / 11:12 am (CNA).

Speaking to the Synod on Synodality on Monday, an Eastern Orthodox bishop said the definition of synodality of the October assembly “differs greatly” from the Orthodox understanding.

Metropolitan Job of Pisidia referenced the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicea in 325, and quoted from the Apostolic Canons, a fourth-century Christian text on the government and discipline of the early Christian Church.

Drawing from this text, he said, “a synod is a deliberative meeting of bishops, not a consultative clergy-laity assembly.” 

“In light of this, we could say that the understanding of synodality in the Orthodox Church differs greatly from the definition of synodality given by your present assembly of the Synod of Bishops,” he added. The current synod now underway at the Vatican is the first of its kind to include laypeople as full voting members.

Metropolitan Job, the Eastern Orthodox bishop of Pisidia and the permanent representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches, is attending the Synod on Synodality as a fraternal delegate.

Fraternal delegates are non-Catholic representatives of Christian Churches. They participate in the synod assembly without the right to vote.

Job was one of four participants to give short speeches during the general congregation held on the morning of Oct. 9.

The metropolitan said he was grateful to be representing the Orthodox Church at the Synod of Bishops and to be able “to bear witness to the practice of synodality in the Orthodox Church.”

He quoted Apostolic Canon 34, reading that: “The bishops of the people of a province or region [ethnos] must recognize the one who is first [protos] amongst them, and consider him to be their head [kephale], and not do anything important without his consent [gnome]; each bishop may only do what concerns his own diocese [paroikia] and its dependent territories. But the first [protos] cannot do anything without the consent of all. For in this way concord [homonoia] will prevail, and God will be praised through the Lord in the Holy Spirit.”

The Eastern Orthodox bishop then said the following four points, “in light of this text”:

• “A synod is a deliberative meeting of bishops, not a consultative clergy-laity assembly.”

• “There cannot be a synod without a primate/protos, and there cannot be a primate/protos without a synod.”

• “The primate/protos is part of the synod; he does not have superior authority to the synod, nor is he excluded from it.”

• “The concord/homonoia which is expressed through the synodal consensus reflects the Trinitarian mystery of the divine life.”

“It is through this practice of synodality, as described by the Apostolic Canons and the canons of the First Ecumenical Council, that the Orthodox Church has been administered over the centuries until the present day, although the frequency and constitution of the synods may vary from one local autocephalous Church to another,” he said.

Job went on to admit that there have been “certain historical circumstances” in which the Orthodox Church has diverged from this formula, including the involvement of the laity in synodal decision-making on several specific occasions, which he listed.

Another exception, he said, is in the Church of Cyprus, where laity are involved in the first stage of the election of bishops.

“Nevertheless, the case of the Church of Cyprus constitutes an exceptional case in contemporary Orthodoxy, where, otherwise, the practice of synodality implies exclusively an assembly of bishops,” he said, noting that during a synod of the Orthodox Church in Crete in 2016, the 62 advisers made up of clergy, monks, and laity did not have the right to speak or vote.

Job’s presentation and those by the three other participants followed a speech by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich introducing the synod’s next round of discussions.

The morning also included a spiritual reflection from Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, and a theological reflection from British theologian Anna Rowlands. 

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null / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Vatican City, Jul 9, 2022 / 05:30 am (CNA).
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