Vatican City, Apr 9, 2018 / 09:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis released an apostolic exhortation in which he aims to “repropose” the universal call to holiness – which he says is the mission of life for every person.
Published April 9, Gaudete et exsultate, or “Rejoice and be glad,” is Francis’ third apostolic exhortation. It is subtitled “On the call to holiness in the contemporary world.”
The 44-page exhortation explains that holiness is the mission of every Christian, and gives practical advice for living out the call to holiness in ordinary, daily life, encouraging the practice of the Beatitudes and performing works of mercy.
Francis mentioned the holiness “in those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile. In their daily perseverance I see the holiness of the Church militant. Very often it is a holiness found in our next-door neighbours, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence. We might call them ‘the middle class of holiness.’”
Francis said that all Catholics that, like the saints, “need to see the entirety of your life as a mission,” and explained that this is accomplished by listening to God in prayer and asking the Holy Spirit for guidance in each moment and decision.
“A Christian cannot think of his or her mission on earth without seeing it as a path of holiness,” he stated, explaining that this path has its “fullest meaning in Christ, and can only be understood through him.”
Using the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Francis wrote that “holiness is nothing other than charity lived to the full.” As a result, the measure of our holiness stems not from our own achievement, but “from the stature that Christ achieves in us.”
Therefore, Pope Francis said, to walk the path of holiness requires prayer and contemplation alongside action; the two cannot be separated.
The pope also touched on what he calls the “two enemies of holiness” – modern versions of the heresies of Pelagianism and Gnosticism, saying that these lead to “false forms of holiness.”
In the modern form of Gnosticism, Francis said, one believes that faith is purely subjective, and that the intellect is the supreme form of perfection, not charity.
This can lead Catholics to think that “because we know something, or are able to explain it in certain terms, we are already saints,” he said, when really, “what we think we know should always motivate us to respond more fully to God’s love.”
In contemporary Pelagianism, he said the common error is to believe that it is by our own effort that we achieve sanctity, forgetting that everything in fact “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy (Rom. 9:16).”
The pope explained that “the Church has repeatedly taught that we are justified not by our own works or efforts, but by the grace of the Lord, who always takes the initiative,” and that even our cooperation with the gift of divine grace is itself “a prior gift of that same grace.”
Some may be asked, through God’s grace, for grand gestures of holiness – as can be seen in the lives of many of the saints, Francis said – but many people are called to live the mission of holiness in a more ordinary way, and in the context of their vocation.
However large or small one’s call seems, Francis said that acts of charity are always undertaken “by God’s grace,” not as people “sufficient unto ourselves, but rather ‘as good stewards of the manifold grace of God’ (1 Peter 4:10),” he said.
The pope offered several practical recommendations for living out these “small gestures.” In addition to the frequent reception of the sacraments and attendance at Mass, he said that in the Beatitudes Jesus explains “with great simplicity what it means to be holy.”
He also said that a way to practice holiness is through the works of mercy, though he warned that to think good works can be separated from a personal relationship with God and openness to grace is to make Christianity into “a sort of NGO.”
The saints, on the other hand, show us that “mental prayer, the love of God and the reading of the Gospel” in no way detract from “passionate and effective commitment to their neighbors.”
The pope highlighted several qualities he finds especially important for living holiness in today’s culture, including: perseverance, patience, humility, joy, a sense of humor, boldness, and passion.
Boldness and passion, he said, are important in order to avoid despondency or mediocrity, which he said can weaken us in the ongoing spiritual battle against evil.
In the journey toward holiness, “the cultivation of all that is good, progress in the spiritual life and growth in love are the best counterbalance to evil,” he said, emphasizing that the existence of the devil is not a myth or an abstract idea, but a “personal being that assails us.”
“Those who choose to remain neutral, who are satisfied with little, who renounce the ideal of giving themselves generously to the Lord, will never hold out” against temptation, he stated.
“For this spiritual combat, we can count on the powerful weapons that the Lord has given us: faith-filled prayer, meditation on the word of God, the celebration of Mass, Eucharistic adoration, sacramental Reconciliation, works of charity, community life, missionary outreach,” he listed.
About the importance of prayer on the path to holiness, the pope said that though “the Lord speaks to us in a variety of ways, at work, through others and at every moment… we simply cannot do without the silence of prolonged prayer.”
“Naturally, this attitude of listening entails obedience to the Gospel as the ultimate standard, but also to the Magisterium that guards it,” he stated, “as we seek to find in the treasury of the Church whatever is most fruitful for the ‘today’ of salvation.”
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States bishops’ conference, praised the exhortation in a statement released Monday, saying: “In this exhortation, Pope Francis is very clear – he is doing his duty as the Vicar of Christ, by strongly urging each and every Christian to freely, and without any qualifications, acknowledge and be open to what God wants them to be – that is ‘to be holy, as He is holy’ (1 Pet 1:15). The mission entrusted to each of us in the waters of baptism was simple – by God’s grace and power, we are called to become saints.”
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Pope Francis’ connection to the severe side of the Holy Spirit’s scripture in this and in the death penalty ( Rom.1:26-27/Rom.13:3-4) is non existent. His two predecessors were likewise disconnected from other severity related themes ( EV sect.40/ Verbum Domini sect.42). It’s pandemic and started in the early 20th century movement of Catholic biblical scholars towards Protestant liberal biblical scholarship which has good points and very bad habits also. Both the bad and the good entered Catholicism and the problem at its root is Biblical. Romans one is implicitly saying between the lines that heterosexuality is a result of passing many tests of loving God and homosexuality is the result of drift from God into excess which gradually leads to gay acts. The one exception I see would be the biological chimera who is the result of two fraternal twin eggs ( boy and girl) lying too close and merging into one embryo..the resulting one person then has both male and female dna which is the one case I know of…of sincere, non sinful gender confusion.
Hardly ‘disconnected’ with John Paul II.
A temptation regardless of the origination.
The actual act in homosexuality is always a choice.
He called the death penalty “ cruel and unnecessary” in St. Louis in 1999 and sought world abolition of it despite his own catechism being a little better than that. To call some action cruel in itself is tantamount to calling it intrinsic evil and is to contradict the over 33 death penalties God gave to the Jews…and one death penalty God gave the Gentiles. He was not connected to all scripture as Aquinas was.
The defenders of Pope Francis will either embrace this or spin it. Let us see if there is a press release from the Vatican on Monday or Tuesday.
Pope Bergoglio’s statement is blasphemy since he claims that the All-Good God has committed “an act of grave depravity” by creating a homosexual person who, as such, is “intrinsically disordered” morally. This statement is also manifest heresy, directly contradicted by the entire Magisterium of the Church and explicitly summarized in the post-conciliar Catechism.
I can just imagine the press release that is being crafted by Vigano that will attempt to explain this latest example of Pontifical prudential absurdity.
New Gospel fragment discovered in Jordanian cave: “And Jesus said unto him, ‘you’re fine just the way you are; go, and change nothing about yourself.”
Pope Francis seems to flatly disagree with St. Paul’s assessment of the matter. If only Paul the Apostle could have understood Jorge Bergoglio’s take on humility and mercy, I’m sure he would have agreed with our Argentine pontiff and backed off all that nasty stuff we find in Romans 1:18-27. Of course, who could be expected to equal the theological brilliance and consequent insights that Francis has, as Vatican insiders assure us? Ah, we’re just so fortunate to live in this pope’s era of enlightened Christianity!
Oh, yes!!! And if only Bergoglio could have lived 2000 years ago, penned the gospels
and omitted the pesky warnings of Jesus which St. Paul reiterated, there would be so much less confusion in the world!! You need to hand it to Bergoglio. He is doing his best with a false torch of enlightenment to lead the masses already in darkness into a fiery abyss. Bergoglio told an abuse victim that God made him gay and that he should be glad to be gay??? Strange, many former homosexuals claim that sexual abuse was a cause of their homossexuality. Is Bergoglio suggegsting the the guy should be glad that he was abused????
According to what has been reported, Pope Francis did not say homosexual acts were o.k. If Pope Francis did say “God made you that way” he is going against what is in the Catechism in section 2357 says about homosexuality, that is “…Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained…”
One item that would be quite tragic in all of the clergy abuse scandals that I haven’t seen addressed is if the abuse may be at the root of some of the victims’ homosexual tendencies.
Here’s the section in the Catechism on Homosexuality in its entirety:
Chastity and homosexuality
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”