Saturday, April 12, 2014
Friday, April 11, 2014
Meet the disfigured man embraced by Pope Francis
The following comes from The Daily News:
When Vinicio Riva traveled to Vatican City in early November to meet Pope Francis, he expected the same treatment he’s gotten his entire life—open-mouthed stares and thinly-veiled apprehension. People are usually afraid to come close to the hundreds of boils that cover Riva’s body, fearing that his very presence could make them sick, too.
The man thought that the Pope would speak to his aunt, who made the pilgrimage with him. He thought he would only get a cursory glance.
But instead, Francis headed straight towards Riva, wrapped his arms around the man’s head and pulled him in for a tight embrace.
It was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.
"He didn't have any fear of my illness," the 53-year-old told CNN. "He embraced me without speaking ... I quivered. I felt a great warmth."
The encounter with the pontiff lasted for just over a minute, but aunt Caterina Lotta says her nephew still feels the reverberations.
"He was almost not himself," Lotta said. "He was shaking."
Riva was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis type 1 when he was just 15 years old. The illness left him with tumors all over his body that swell and itch. His undershirt is often soaked with the blood that oozes out of his sores.
Pope Francis: Satan exists in the 21st century and how we can fight him
Pope Francis said the life of every Christian is a constant battle against evil just as Jesus during his life had to struggle against the devil and his many temptations. And he warned that whoever wants to follow Jesus must be aware of this reality.
“We too are tempted, we too are the target of attacks by the devil because the spirit of Evil does not want our holiness, he does not want our Christian witness, he does not want us to be disciples of Christ. And what does the Spirit of Evil do, through his temptations, to distance us from the path of Jesus? The temptation of the devil has three characteristics and we need to learn about them in order not to fall into the trap. What does Satan do to distance us from the path of Jesus? Firstly, his temptation begins gradually but grows and is always growing. Secondly, it grows and infects another person, it spreads to another and seeks to be part of the community. And in the end, in order to calm the soul, it justifies itself. It grows, it spreads and it justifies itself.”
Turning to the bible, the Pope recalled how Jesus’s first temptation by Satan was almost ‘like a seduction.’ Satan told Jesus to throw himself down from the Temple so that all the people will see that he is the Messiah! And warned the Pope, when the devil is rejected, he grows and comes back stronger than before. Jesus himself noted this in the gospel when the devil went around looking for companions and with them returned to Jesus. Satan got involved with Jesus’s enemies and what seemed at first like a calm trickle of water turned into a flood of water. In this way, the temptation grows, infects others and justifies itself. As an illustration, the Pope recalled how when Jesus preached in the synagogue, his enemies belittled him by saying “but isn’t this the son of Joseph, the carpenter, the son of Mary. He never studied so with what authority can he speak?
“We have a temptation that grows: it grows and infects others. For example, let’s look at gossip: I’m a bit envious of this or that person and at first I’m just envious inside and I need to share it and go to another person and say: “But have you seen that person?’.. and this gossip tries to grow and infects another and another… This is the way gossip works and all of us have been tempted to gossip! Maybe not one of you, if you’re a saint , but I too have been tempted to gossip! It’s a daily temptation. And it begins in this way, discreetly, like a trickle of water. It grows by infecting others and in the end it justifies itself.”
Pope Francis concluded by urging people to be vigilant and not to give in to that initial temptation and thus allow it to spread to others and justify itself.
“We are all tempted because the law of our spiritual life, our Christian life is a struggle: a struggle. That’s because the Prince of this world, Satan, doesn’t want our holiness, he doesn’t want us to follow Christ. Maybe some of you might say: ‘But Father, how old fashioned you are to speak about the devil in the 21st century!’ But look out because the devil is present! The devil is here… even in the 21st century! And we mustn’t be naïve, right? We must learn from the Gospel how to fight against Satan.”
Pope Francis warns against the dictatorship of narrow thought
“Even today there is a dictatorship of a narrow line of thought” which kills “people’s freedom, their freedom of conscience,” the Pope expressed in his April 10 daily Mass.
Speaking to those present in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse, Pope Francis launched his homily by reflecting on the day’s first reading, taken from Genesis, in which God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, but that he and his descendants would have to observe the Covenant with the Lord.
Looking at this passage, he noted, helps to explain Jesus’ message to the Pharisees in the day’s Gospel, taken from John, in which he calls them liars because they did not listen to the prophets, and reveals that he has existed long before Abraham, for which they attempt to stone him.
Their mistake, the pontiff observed, was to “detach the commandments from the heart of God,” emphasizing how they thought it was enough to merely obey the commandments, which are more than “just a cold law.”
“This is the drama of the closed heart, the drama of the closed mind, and when the heart is closed, this heart closes the mind, and when the heart and mind are closed there is no place for God,” but only for what we believe should be done, the Pope continued.
“It is a closed way of thinking that is not open to dialogue, to the possibility that there is something else, the possibility that God speaks to us, tells us about His journey, as he did to the prophets,” he emphasized, noting that “these people did not listen to the prophets and did not listen to Jesus.”
Explaining how this attitude is “something greater than a mere stubbornness,” the Roman Pontiff insisted that “No, it is more: it is the idolatry of their own way of thinking.”
Highlighting that “these people had a narrow line of thought and wanted to impose this way of thinking on the people of God,” the Pope drew attention to how “Jesus rebukes them for this” by saying, “You burden the people with many commandments and you do not touch them with your finger.”
Pope Francis then went on to describe how the theology of the Pharisees “becomes a slave to this pattern, this pattern of thought: a narrow line of thought,” and observed that “there is no possibility of dialogue.”
Continuing, he emphasized that with this mentality “there is no possibility to open up to new things which God brings with the prophets,” stating that “they killed the prophets, these people; they close the door to the promise of God.”
“When this phenomenon of narrow thinking enters human history, how many misfortunes,” he lamented, adding that “we all saw in the last century, the dictatorships of narrow thought, which ended up killing a lot of people...when they believed they were the overlords, no other form of thought was allowed. This is the way they think.”
Explaining how even now people foster this idolatry of “a narrow line of thought,” Pope Francis emphasized that “today we have to think in this way and if you do not think in this way, you are not modern, you're not open or worse.”
“Often rulers say: ‘I have asked for aid, financial support for this,’ ‘But if you want this help, you have to think in this way and you have to pass this law, and this other law and this other law,” he expressed, noting that type of dictatorship “is the same as these people.”
“It takes up stones to stone the freedom of the people, the freedom of the people, their freedom of conscience, the relationship of the people with God. Today Jesus is Crucified once again.”
Concluding his homily, the Roman Pontiff drew attention to Jesus’ exhortation in front of this narrow-minded thought, stating that it “is always the same: be vigilant and pray; do not be silly, do not buy” into things “you do not need.”
“Be humble and pray, that the Lord always gives us the freedom of an open heart, to receive his Word which is joy and promise and covenant! And with this covenant move forward!”
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Pope Francis: Wisdom is seeing with God’s eyes
Below please find a Vatican Radio translation of the Holy Father’s general audience catechesis:
Dear Brothers and Sisters ,
Today we begin a series of reflections on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the soul, the lifeblood of the Church and of every Christian: He is God’s Love, who makes our hearts his home and enters into communion with us. The Holy Spirit is always with us, always in us, in our hearts.
The Spirit himself is "God's gift" par excellence (cf. Jn 4:10) a gift from God, and in turn communicates different spiritual gifts to those who welcome him. The Church identifies seven, a number that symbolically speaks of fullness, completeness; we learn these when preparing for the sacrament of Confirmation and we invoke them in the ancient prayer called the "Sequence of the Holy Spirit" the gifts of the Holy Spirit are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude , knowledge, piety and fear of God.
1 . The first gift of the Holy Spirit , according to this traditional list, is wisdom. It is not merely human wisdom, no, the fruit of knowledge and experience. In the Bible we are told that, at the time of his coronation as king of Israel , God asked Solomon what gift he wanted to receive. Solomon did not ask for wealth, success, fame , or a long and happy life, instead he asked for “an understanding heart that knows how to distinguish good from evil" ( 1 Kings 3:9). This is wisdom: it is the grace of being able to see everything with the eyes of God. It is simply this: Seeing the world…situations, conjunctures, problems, everything with God’s eyes. This is wisdom. Often we see things as we want to see them or according to our heart, with love, with hate, with envy… no this is not God’s eyes. Wisdom is what the Holy Spirit does within us so that we can see everything with God’s eyes. This is the gift of wisdom.
2 . Obviously this gift comes from intimacy with God. For our intimate relationship with God. From our relationship as children with a Father. And the Holy Spirit – when we have this relationship – gives us the gift of wisdom. When we are in communion with the Lord , it is as if the Spirit transfigures our heart and helps it to perceive all his warmth and predilection.
3 . The Holy Spirit also makes the Christian "wise". This is, however , not in the sense that he or she has an answer for everything, or knows everything, but in the sense that he or she "knows" of God, how God acts, they know when something is of God and when it is not. They know this, they have this wisdom that God gives our heart. The heart of the wise man has this taste of God. It is so important that our communities have Christians such as these! Everything about them speaks of God and becomes a beautiful and vital sign of His presence and His love. And it is something we cannot improvise, something we cannot obtain by our own merits: it is a gift that God gives to those who are docile to His Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit in our hearts we can listen to him or not. If we listen to him he teaches us this path of wisdom, he gifts us wisdom which is seeing with God’s eyes, listening with God’s ears, loving with God’s heart, judging things with Gods’ judgment. These are the things that Holy Spirit gifts us and we can all have this. We just have to ask the Holy Spirit.
Think of a mother at home with her children. One does something and the other thinks otherwise and the poor mother is torn between the two with the children’s problems; when the mother is tired and she shouts at her children, is that wisdom? I ask you is that wisdom – what do you say? No! Instead when the mother takes her child to one side and gently rebukes him, and explains this is God’s wisdom! Yes! And this is what the Holy Spirit gives us in life.
In a marriage for example, the couple argue, then they won’t look at one another, or if they do it is with anger…Is that God’s wisdom? No! Instead when they say let the storm pass, let’s make peace! That’s wisdom, that’s the gift of wisdom, that comes to our homes, to children, to all of us! And it cannot be learned, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit! This is why we must ask the Lord to gift us the Holy Spirit and the gift of wisdom that teaches us to see with God’s eyes, to feel with God’s heart to speak with God’s words! And with this wisdom we can move forward, build the family, the Church and we can all be sanctified.
Let us ask for this grace of wisdom today. Let us ask Our Lady, who is the Seat of Wisdom, for this gift.
Thank you
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
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