Pope Francis arriving at the general audience at the Vatican, Dec. 14, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Dec 14, 2022 / 03:42 am (CNA).
Pope Francis is inviting everyone to have “a more humble Christmas” this year.At the end of his week… […]
Pope Francis speaking at the general audience at the Vatican, Dec. 14, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Dec 14, 2022 / 03:29 am (CNA).
Pope Francis encouraged Christians Wednesday to be vigilant against spiritual pride and the temptati… […]
Pope Francis speaking at the general audience on St. Peter’s Square, Nov. 9, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Nov 9, 2022 / 03:34 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said Wednesday his trip to the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain was a new step on the journey to create “fraternal alliances” between Christians and Muslims.
The pope spoke about his Nov. 3-6 visit to Bahrain, a small, overwhelmingly Muslim country in the Persian Gulf, during his weekly public audience in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 9.
“The journey to Bahrain should not be seen as an isolated episode,” he said. “It was part of a process initiated by Saint John Paul II when he went to Morocco.”
This is why, he continued, “the first visit of a pope in Bahrain represents a new step on the journey between Christian and Muslim believers — not to confuse things or water down the faith, but to create fraternal alliances in the name of our Father Abraham, who was a pilgrim on earth under the merciful gaze of the one God of Heaven, the God of peace.”
“And why do I say that dialogue does not water down [the faith]?” Francis said. “Because to dialogue you have to have your own identity, you have to start from your identity. If you do not have identity, you cannot dialogue, because you do not understand what you are either.”
The motto of Pope Francis’ visit to Bahrain was “Peace on earth to people of goodwill.” The trip included encounters with government officials, Muslim leaders, and the small Catholic community, including a Mass with around 30,000 people in Bahrain’s national soccer stadium.
The small Christian minority in Bahrain is mostly made up of immigrants, especially from India and the Philippines.
More than 70% of the total population — 1.5 million — is Muslim, while there are only about 161,000 Catholics living in the country, according to 2020 Vatican statistics.
Pope Francis said Wednesday it was “marvelous” to see the many Christian immigrants in Bahrain.
“The brothers and sisters in the faith, whom I met in Bahrain, truly live ‘on a journey,’” he said. “For the most part, they are immigrant laborers who, far from home, discover their roots in the People of God and their family within the larger family of the Church. And they move ahead joyfully, in the certainty that the hope of God does not disappoint.”
The pope pointed out that the Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago of 33 islands, which “helps us understand that it is not necessary to live by isolating ourselves, but by coming closer” — something which aids peace.
He said “dialogue is the ‘oxygen of peace,’” not only in a nation but also in a family: Dialogue can help bring peace to a husband and wife who are fighting, for example.
Throughout his visit to Bahrain, Francis said, he heard several times the desire to increase encounters and strengthen the relationship between Christians and Muslims in the country.
He recalled a custom in that part of the world to place one’s hand on the heart when greeting another person. “I did this too,” he said, “to make room inside me for the person I was meeting.”
“For without this welcome, dialogue remains empty, illusory, it remains on the level of an idea rather than reality,” he said.
Francis encouraged Catholics to have “open hearts,” not closed, hard hearts, and said he would like to transmit the “genuine, simple, and beautiful joy” of the Christian priests, religious, and lay people he met in Bahrain.
“Meeting each other and praying together, we felt we were of one heart and one soul,” he said.
At the beginning of the general audience, Pope Francis drew attention to two “courageous” children who had approached the platform where he was sitting.
These children “didn’t ask permission, they didn’t say, ‘Ah, I’m afraid’ — they came directly,” he said. “They gave us an example of how we are to be with God, with the Lord: go for it.”
“He is always waiting for us,” he continued. “It did me good to see the trust of these two children: it was an example for all of us. This is how we must always approach the Lord: with freedom.”
Pope Francis arriving for the general audience on St. Peter’s Square, Oct. 26, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Oct 26, 2022 / 04:02 am (CNA).
Pope Francis explained on Wednesday how times of spiritual desolation — described by St. Ignatius of Loyola as feelings of unquiet, temptation, sadness — can also help bring us closer to God.
“No one wants to be desolate, sad. We would all like a life that is always joyful, cheerful and fulfilled. Yet this, besides not being possible — because it is not possible — would not be good for us either,” the pope said during the general audience on Oct. 26.
In fact, he added, feelings of sadness or remorse can be the impetus for turning away from a life of vice.
Pope Francis continued his lessons on discernment with a reflection on spiritual desolation at his weekly gathering with the public in St. Peter’s Square.
Quoting from St. Ignatius of Loyola’s spiritual exercises, he said desolation is defined as: “Darkness of soul, disturbance in it, movement to things low and earthly, the unquiet of different agitations and temptations, moving to want of confidence, without hope, without love, when the soul finds itself all lazy, tepid, sad and as if separated from its Creator and Lord.”
He said one thing to know about desolation is that it is an invitation to self-reflection.
“It is important to learn how to read sadness,” Francis said. “We all know what sadness is: everyone. But do we know how to read it? Do we know what it means for me, this sadness of today?”
“In our time, [sadness] is mostly considered negatively, as an ill to avoid at all costs, and instead it can be an indispensable alarm bell for life, inviting us to explore richer and more fertile landscapes that transience and escapism do not permit,” he added.
The pope also pointed to St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of sadness in the Summa Theologica as a “pain of the soul: like the nerves for the body, it redirects our attention to a possible danger, or a disregarded benefit.”
He compared the feelings to a red traffic light warning us to stop.
Pope Francis said we should also be aware of how the devil may try to use feelings of sadness or desolation to tempt us away from intentions to live with virtue.
“For those, on the other hand, who have the desire to do good, sadness is an obstacle with which the tempter tries to discourage us,” he explained.
“Think of work, study, prayer, a commitment undertaken: if we abandoned them as soon as we felt boredom or sadness, we would never complete anything,” he continued. “This is also an experience common to the spiritual life: the road to goodness, the Gospel reminds us, is narrow and uphill, it requires combat, self-conquest.”
He described a common experience: “I begin to pray, or dedicate myself to a good work, and strangely enough, just then things come to mind that need to be done urgently.”
“It is important, for those who want to serve the Lord, not to be led astray by desolation,” he warned, encouraging people to first pause and consider their state of mind before taking any drastic decisions.
“A wise rule says not to make changes when you are desolate,” he said without the help of a good spiritual guide.
The pope concluded by paraphrasing the encouraging words of St. Paul, who wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13, that no one will be tempted beyond his or her ability, because the Lord never abandons us, and with him near, we can overcome every temptation.
And if we do not succeed today, he said, let us rise up and try again tomorrow.
Pope Francis at the general audience, Oct. 19, 2022 — and St. Augustine of Hippo in a painting by Philippe de Champaigne, ca. 1650. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA // Wikimedia (CC0)
Rome Newsroom, Oct 19, 2022 / 03:59 am (CNA).
Saint Augustine’s C… […]
Pope Francis speaking on St. Peter’s Square, Vatican, Oct. 12, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Oct 12, 2022 / 03:35 am (CNA).
At his public audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis spoke about the role desire plays in spiritual discernment, comparing it to a compass that points one in the right direction.
“Desire is not the craving of the moment. No. The Italian word, desiderio, comes from a very beautiful Latin term, desidus, literally ‘the lack of the star,’” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 12.
“Desire is ‘the lack of the star,’ of the reference point that orients the path of life,” he continued. “It evokes a suffering, a lack, and at the same time a tension to reach the good that is missing.”
The pope spoke in his general audience about desire as the third “indispensable ingredient” of discernment, after prayer and self-knowledge.
On Aug. 31, Francis began a series of weekly catecheses, or messages, on discernment, which he described as “an exercise of intelligence, and also of skill and also of will, to seize the opportune moment” in order to make a good choice about one’s life.
“Desire, then,” he said in the live-streamed address on Wednesday, “is the compass to understand where I am and where I am going. Actually, it is the compass for whether I am standing still or going.”
Pope Francis addressed how someone can recognize desire within themselves in his message. “A sincere desire,” he said, “knows how to touch deeply the chords of our being, which is why it is not extinguished in the face of difficulties or setbacks.”
“Unlike a momentary craving or emotion, desire lasts through time, even a long time,” he explained.
Pope Francis pointed to some of the pitfalls to knowing the desires of one’s heart; for example, society’s promotion of “the maximum freedom of choice,” while those “choices” are mostly reduced to just what is wanted most in the moment, not what will truly satisfy over the long term.
“We are bombarded by a thousand proposals, projects, possibilities, which risk distracting us and not permitting us to calmly evaluate what we really want,” the pope said, adding that many people go around “with their cell phones in their hands and they are searching, looking,” but never stopping to think or reflect.
“Desire cannot grow like that,” he said. “You live in the moment, satiated in the moment, and desire does not grow.”
Francis said that distraction can cause people a lot of suffering “because they do not know what they want from their lives; they have probably never got in touch with their deepest desire.”
Another pitfall the pope mentioned was the knowledge that one wants to do something but never actually takes action.
“And so certain changes, though desired in theory, when the opportunity arises are never implemented,” he said.
“Often,” he said, “it is indeed desire that makes the difference between a successful, coherent and lasting project, and the thousands of wishes and good intentions with which, as they say, ‘hell is paved with.’”
He recalled that Jesus, before performing a miracle, often questions a person about his or her desires, like he does with the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda in chapter five of the Gospel of John.
“Jesus asks him: ‘Do you want to be well?’ How come?” the pope said.
He explained that “Jesus’ question was an invitation to bring clarity to his heart, to welcome a possible leap forward: to no longer think of himself and his own life ‘as a paralytic,’ transported by others. … By engaging in dialogue with the Lord, we learn to understand what we truly want from life.”
The paralytic, he continued, is an “example of people [who say,] ‘Yes, yes, I want, I want,’” but in the end, never do anything.
Instead of taking action, we find excuses or complain: “But be careful,” he said, because “complaints are a poison, a poison to the soul, a poison to life because they don’t make you grow the desire to move forward.”
“If the Lord were to ask us, today, the question he asked the blind man in Jericho: ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ how would we answer?” the pope said. “Perhaps we could finally ask him to help us know his deepest desire, that God himself has placed in our heart.”
Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square, Sept. 28, 2022 / Pablo Esparza / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Sep 28, 2022 / 03:41 am (CNA).
Prayer is the first element of discernment, Pope Francis said in his general audience message on Wednesday.
“To discern we need to be in an environment, in a state of prayer,” he said Sept. 28 in St. Peter’s Square.
“We resume our catecheses on the theme of discernment,” the pope said, “because the theme of discernment is very important to know what is going on inside of us — feelings and ideas — we have to discern where they come from, where they lead me, to what decision.”
Francis emphasized that discernment does not lead to absolute certainty, because “life is not always logical” and humans are not machines, but “prayer is an indispensable aid.”
“It is not enough to be given instructions to carry out,” he said. “We would like to know precisely what should be done, yet even when it happens, we do not always act accordingly. How many times have we, too, had the experience described by the apostle Paul: ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want.’”
He pointed out that the first miracle Jesus performs in the Gospel of Mark is an exorcism. In the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus delivers a man from the devil, “freeing him from the false image of God that Satan has been suggesting since the beginning: that of a God who does not want our happiness.”
Pope Francis noted that this is a trap many people, even Christians, can fall into: they may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, “but they doubt that he wants our happiness.”
“Indeed, some fear that taking his proposal seriously means ruining our lives, mortifying our desires, our strongest aspirations. These thoughts sometimes creep up inside us: that God asks too much of us, or wants to take away what we hold most dear. In short, that He doesn’t really love us,” Francis said.
But, he explained, meeting the Lord in prayer should produce joy, not fear or sadness, which are signs of distance from him.
He encouraged people to pray to God with simplicity. Just like they would greet a friend, they can say “hello” to God throughout the day.
Prayer “is knowing how to go beyond thoughts, to enter into intimacy with the Lord, with an affectionate spontaneity,” he said, adding that “true prayer is familiarity and confidence with God. It is not reciting prayers like a parrot, blah blah blah, no.”
“To be in prayer,” he said, “is not to say words, words, no; to be in prayer is to open my heart to Jesus, to draw closer to Jesus, to let Jesus come into my heart and let us feel his presence.”
This, the pope continued, is how we can discern when it is Jesus speaking to us and when it is just our own thoughts.
Francis said familiarity with the Lord also helps us to overcome the fear or doubt that God’s will is not for our good, “a temptation that sometimes runs through our thoughts and makes the heart restless and uncertain.”
“Discerning is not easy, for appearances are deceptive, but familiarity with God can melt doubts and fears in a gentle way, making our lives increasingly receptive to his ‘gentle light,’ according to the beautiful expression of Saint John Henry Newman,” he said.
“It is a grace we must ask for each other: to see Jesus as our friend, our greatest friend, our faithful friend, who does not extort us, who, above all, never abandons us, even when we turn away from him,” he said. “He remains at the door of the heart.”
In his final greeting at the end of the audience, Pope Francis recalled that Thursday, Sept. 29, the Church celebrates the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.
These saints “arouse in each one of us a sincere adherence to the divine plans. Know how to recognize and follow the voice of the inner Master, who speaks in the secret of our consciousness,” he said.
General audience with Pope Francis on St. Peter’s Square, Vatican, Sept. 21, 2022 / Pablo Esparza / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Sep 21, 2022 / 04:05 am (CNA).
Reflecting on his recent trip to Kazakhstan, Pope Francis on Wednesday said that offering Mass for the feast of the Holy Cross surrounded by the capital city of Nur-Sultan’s “ultra-modern architecture” led him to think about the meaning of the cross today.
“In a world in which progress and regression are intertwined, the cross of Christ remains the anchor of salvation,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 21.
Speaking at his Wednesday general audience, the pope underlined that the cross is “a sign of hope that does not disappoint because it is founded on the love of God, merciful and faithful.”
Pope Francis said his Sept. 13–15 visit to the Central Asian country reminded him of Kazakhstan’s many martyrs who “suffered so much for the faith during the long period of persecution: murdered, tortured, imprisoned for the faith.”
“And credit … must be given to the Kazakh government, which, having freed itself from the yoke of the atheistic regime, now proposes a path of civilization clearly condemning fundamentalism and extremism,” he said.
The primary purpose of the pope’s trip to Kazakhstan was to take part in an interreligious conference, the Seventh Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.
On the final day of the congress, delegates representing the world’s major religions voted to adopt a declaration calling religious pluralism an expression “of the wisdom of God’s will in creation.”
Pope Francis said that the congress aimed to put “religions at the center of efforts to build a world where we listen to each other and respect each other in diversity.”
“And this is not relativism,” he added. “It is listening and respecting.”
Throughout his trip last week, the pope repeatedly appealed for dialogue and peace in the “senseless and tragic war” in Ukraine. At the end of his general audience, the pope repeated his appeal, expressing solidarity with the “noble and martyred” Ukrainian people.
The pope said this envoy in Ukraine, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, called him yesterday and described “the pain of the people, the savage actions, the monstrosities, and the tortured corpses that had been found.”
He was likely referring to Krajewski’s recent visit to a mass grave in Izium, Ukraine, where 146 bodies, mostly civilians, have been exhumed so far.
Pope Francis also highlighted World Alzheimer’s Day, noting that the disease “affects so many people who, because of this condition, are often placed on the margins of society.”
“We pray for Alzheimer’s patients, their families and their loving caregivers, that they will be increasingly supported and helped,” he said.
Pope Francis during the weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, Sept. 7, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Sep 7, 2022 / 04:24 am (CNA).
God can speak to us in the unexpected moments of our lives if we learn to listen well to what he is telling us in our hearts, Pope Francis said on Wednesday.
“I will give you a piece of advice: beware of the unexpected,” the pope said Sept. 7 at his weekly public audience.
“Is it life speaking to you, is it the Lord speaking to you, or is it the devil? Someone,” he continued. “But there is something to discern, how I react when faced with the unexpected.”
Francis’ general audience was again in St. Peter’s Square Wednesday after it was held inside the Vatican’s Paul VI auditorium in August to avoid the worst of the summer heat.
The pope opened and closed his encounter with the public by riding the popemobile around the square. The audience marked his second week of catechesis on the theme of “Discernment.”
As part of discernment, the pope encouraged people to reflect on their reactions to even small, unexpected circumstances, such as the surprise arrival of one’s mother-in-law.
“I was quiet at home and ‘Boom!’ — my mother-in-law arrives; and how do you react to your mother-in-law? Is it love or something else inside? You must discern,” he said. “I was working well in the office, and a companion comes along to tell me he needs money: how do you react? See what happens when we experience things we were not expecting, and there we can learn to know our heart as it moves.”
Pope Francis said knowing how to really listen to your heart is an important part of discernment in making a judgment or decision about something.
“We listen to the television, the radio, the mobile phone; we are experts at listening, but I ask you: do you know how to listen to your heart?” he asked. “Do you stop to ask: ‘But how is my heart? Is it satisfied, is it sad, is it searching for something?’ To make good decisions, you need to listen to your heart.”
To illustrate his point, the pope recalled the story of the conversion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier enamored with stories of knights and chivalry who was forced to confront his future happiness after he was badly injured in battle.
Bored while his leg was healing, Ignatius read stories of the saints and the life of Jesus when other books were not available to him.
Francis quoted from Ignatius’ autobiography, in which the future saint wrote about himself: “‘When he thought of worldly things’ — and of chivalrous things, one understands — ‘it gave him great pleasure, but afterward he found himself dry and sad. But when he thought of journeying to Jerusalem, and of living only on herbs and practicing austerities, he found pleasure not only while thinking of them, but also when he had ceased.’”
“In this experience we note two aspects, above all,” the pope said. “The first is time: that is, the thoughts of the world are attractive at the beginning, but then they lose their luster and leave emptiness and discontent; they leave you that way, empty. Thoughts of God, on the contrary, rouse first a certain resistance — ‘But I’m not going to read this boring thing about saints’ — but when they are welcomed, they bring an unknown peace that lasts for a long time.”
He emphasized that “discernment is not a sort of oracle or fatalism, or something from a laboratory, like casting one’s lot on two possibilities.”
Francis also said that some of life’s big questions often arise after “we have already traveled a stretch of the road in life.”
Sometimes, we can get stuck on one idea and end up disappointed, he pointed out, adding that doing something good, such as a work of charity, can get us out of that rut by bringing us joy and happiness, feelings which can lead to thoughts of God.
The pope also shared a piece of wisdom from Saint Ignatius: to read the lives of the saints.
“Because they show the style of God in the life of people not very different to us, because the saints were made of flesh and blood like us, in a narrative, comprehensible way. Their actions speak to ours, and they help us to understand their meaning,” he said.
Sometimes, he added, “there is an apparent randomness in the events of life: everything seems to arise from a banal mishap — there were no books about knights, only lives of saints. A mishap that nonetheless holds a possible turning point.”
“God works through unplannable events, and also through mishaps,” he said. “Mishap: What is God saying to you? What is life telling you there?”
At the end of his general audience, Pope Francis expressed his closeness to all mothers, and “in a special way, to those mothers who have children who suffer: those who are sick, those who are marginalized, those who are imprisoned.”
“A special prayer goes to the mothers of young detainees: let hope never be lacking. Unfortunately, in prisons there are many people who take their own life, at times also young people. A mother’s love can save them from this danger. May Our Lady console all mothers distressed by the suffering of their children,” he said.
Pope Francis greeting pilgrims and visitors to the weekly general audience on Aug. 31, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Aug 31, 2022 / 03:15 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has launched a new catechesis series on spiritual discernment.The pope … […]
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