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Pope Francis appeared in the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Sunday, June 18 to make his first public speech since his release from the hospital. / Vatican Media
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Pope Francis at his Wednesday general audience on April 12, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
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Pope Francis’ General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday spoke against a comfortable Christianity that keeps Jesus at arm’s length, rather than inviting him into the heart to change it.
“If one of us says, ‘Ah, thank you Lord, because I am a good person, I do good things, I do not commit major sins…’ this is not a good path, this is the path of self-sufficiency, it is a path that does not justify you, it makes you turn up your nose,” the pope said during his weekly public audience March 29.
He called this attitude being “an elegant Catholic, but an elegant Catholic is not a holy Catholic, he is elegant.”
“The true Catholic, the true Christian is one who receives Jesus within, which changes your heart,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square.
“This,” he continued, “is the question I ask you all today: What does Jesus mean for me? Did I let him enter my heart, or do I keep him within reach, but so that he does not really enter within? Have I let myself be changed by him? Or is Jesus just an idea, a theology that goes ahead…”
At his Wednesday general audience, the pope continued his reflections on evangelization and apostolic zeal with a catechesis centered on St. Paul’s transformation from a persecutor of Christians to a great evangelist.
St. Paul “was a man who was zealous about the law of Moses for Judaism, and after his conversion, this zeal continued, but to proclaim, to preach Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis explained. “Paul loved Jesus. Saul — Paul’s first name — was already zealous, but Christ converts his zeal.”
To better explain zeal, the pope referenced St. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that passion, from a moral perspective, is neither good nor bad: it depends on if it is used virtuously or sinfully.
“In Paul’s case, what changed him is not a simple idea or a conviction: it was the encounter, this word, it was the encounter with the risen Lord — do not forget this, it is the encounter with the Lord that changes a life — it was the encounter with the risen Lord that transformed his entire being,” the pope said.
“Paul’s humanity,” he added, “his passion for God and his glory was not annihilated, but transformed, ‘converted’ by the Holy Spirit.”
The pope noted that part of the change that takes place in Paul is his conversion from feeling righteous before God, and thus authorized to persecute, to arrest, and even to kill — to someone who, enlightened by God, recognizes himself to be a “blasphemer and persecutor.”
After recognizing what he had done, Paul becomes truly capable of loving, Francis said.
“If Jesus did not enter your life, it did not change,” he said. “You cannot be Christian only from the outside. No, Jesus must enter and this changes you, and this happened to Paul. It is finding Jesus, and this is why Paul said that Christ’s love drives us, it is what takes you forward.”
“This is zeal, when one finds Jesus and feels the fire, like Paul, and must preach Jesus, must talk about Jesus, must help people, must do good things,” he explained. “When one finds the idea of Jesus, he or she remains an ideologue of Christianity, and this does not justify, only Jesus justifies us. May the Lord help us find Jesus, encounter Jesus, and may this Jesus change our life from within and help us to help others.”
Pope Francis greets pilgrims at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 22, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Mar 22, 2023 / 05:20 am (CNA).
To effectively witness to the Gospel, Christians need to be consistent in what they believe, how they live, and what they preach, Pope Francis said Wednesday.
“The witness of an authentically Christian life involves a journey to holiness,” Pope Francis said on March 22.
Speaking at his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square, the pope underlined that Christian witness must include “professed faith” of what the Church teaches that transforms both one’s relationships and “the values that determine our choices.”
“Witness, therefore, cannot be separated from consistency between what one believes, what one proclaims, and how one lives,” he said.
“A person is credible if there is harmony between what he believes and how he lives. Many Christians only say they believe, but live something else … and this is hypocrisy.”
The pope asked the crowd to reflect on three questions first posed by Paul VI in his apostolic exhortation on evangelization in the modern world, Evangelii nuntiandi: “Do you believe what you are proclaiming? Do you live what you believe? Do you preach what you live?”
Pope Francis emphasized that holiness is “not reserved for a few” but is “a gift from God that demands to be received and made to bear fruit for ourselves and for others.”
“Paul VI teaches that the zeal for evangelization springs from holiness, springs from a heart that is full of God,” he said.
“Nourished by prayer and above all by love for the Eucharist, evangelization, in turn, increases holiness in those who carry it out.”
Because of the importance of bearing witness to the Gospel, Pope Francis said that it is necessary for the Church to constantly be “evangelizing herself.”
“Indeed, ‘she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love. She is the People of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols … and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the mighty works of God … this means that she has a constant need of being evangelized if she wishes to retain freshness, vigor, and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel,’” he said, quoting Evangelii nuntiandi.
“A Church that evangelizes herself in order to evangelize is a Church that, guided by the Holy Spirit, is required to walk a demanding path of continuous conversion and renewal,” he added.
Pope Francis arrived at the general audience in the popemobile to a Florentine flag corps performance by a colorfully-clothed group that preserves the music and traditions from Tuscany’s medieval and Renaissance history.
At the end of the audience, the pope blessed a large bell engraved with the words, “Voice of the Unborn,” which will be installed in Lusaka, Zambia.
The giant bell was forged in the workshop of Jan Felczyński in Przemyśl, Poland as part of an initiative by the Polish Yes to Life foundation. Pope Francis has previously blessed “Voice of the Unborn” bells for Poland, Ecuador, and Ukraine.
Francis called the bell a “sign of the need to protect human life from conception to natural death.”
“Let its sound carry the message that every life is sacred and inviolable. I bless you from my heart,” he said.
Pope Francis also recalled the upcoming anniversary of his consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Virgin Mary on March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
“Let us not tire of entrusting the cause of peace to the Queen of Peace,” the pope said.
“Therefore, I would like to invite each believer and community, especially prayer groups, to renew every March 25 the act of consecration to Our Lady, so that she, who is Mother, may guard us all in unity and peace.”
© Catholic World Report