Vatican City, Dec 1, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- This Advent, choose prayer and charity over consumerism, Pope Francis said Sunday in his first Mass of the liturgical year.
“Resist the dazzling lights of consumption, which will shine everywhere this month, and believe that prayer and charity are not lost time, but the greatest treasures,” Pope Francis said in his Advent homily Dec. 1.
“This is the drama of today: houses full of things, but empty of children,” he said in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Francis celebrated an Advent Mass with Congolese immigrants, in which he warned against the selfish attitudes in a society where “consumerism reigns.”
“Consumerism is a virus that affects the faith at its root because it makes you believe that life depends only on what you have, and so you forget about God,” he warned. “The meaning of life is not to accumulate.”
“When you live for things, things are never enough, greed grows and others become obstacles in the race and so you end up feeling threatened and, always dissatisfied and angry … ‘I want more, I want more, I want more,’” he said. “One has many goods, but no good is done.”
Pope Francis celebrated the Mass at St. Peter’s Altar of the Chair to mark the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Congolese Catholic Chaplaincy of Rome. The inculturated Mass included traditional Congolese music and the Zaire Use of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
“Dear brothers and sisters, you have come from afar. You left your homes, you left loved ones and dear things. Once here, you have found acceptance along with difficulties and unexpected events. But for God you are always welcome. For Him we are never strangers,” the pope said.
“Today we pray for peace, seriously threatened in the east of the country, especially in the territories of Beni and Minembwe, where conflicts are raging, fed also by the complicit silence of many. Conflicts fueled by those who get rich selling weapons,” he said.
Pope Francis remarked that the word Advent means “coming.”
“The Lord comes,” he said. “Here is the root of our hope: the assurance that the consolation of God reaches us among the tribulations of the world, a consolation that is not made of words, but of presence, of His presence that comes among us.”
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Vatican City, Apr 18, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- A Vatican Congregation has announced that it is sending medical supplies to Syria and the Holy Land as the coronavirus spreads across the Middle East.
The Congregation for the Oriental Churches said … […]
Pope Francis waves to crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square on June 19, 2022, on Corpus Christi Sunday. / Vatican Media
Denver Newsroom, Jun 19, 2022 / 09:56 am (CNA).
The Feast of Corpus Christi is a time for Christians to remember that God will meet their basic needs to eat and to be filled with the joy and amazement of receiving loving nourishment from Jesus Christ, Pope Francis said Sunday.
At the same time, the pope emphasized, the Eucharist must also move Christians to action.
“We can evaluate our Eucharistic Adoration when we take care of our neighbor like Jesus does,” the pope said Sunday before the recitation of the Angelus at St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
“There is hunger for food around us, but also for companionship; there is hunger for consolation, friendship, good humor; there is hunger for attention, there is hunger to be evangelized. We find this in the Eucharistic Bread — the attention of Christ to our needs and the invitation to do the same toward those who are beside us. We need to eat and feed others.”
The pope’s remarks reflected on Sunday’s Gospel reading, the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes from the Gospel of Luke.
The pope linked the reading to the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The Eucharist was like “the destination of a journey along which Jesus had prefigured through several signs, above all the multiplication of the loaves narrated in the Gospel of today’s liturgy.”
The pontiff reflected on the manner of the miracle when Jesus fed so many who lacked food.
“The miracle of the loaves and fishes does not happen in a spectacular way, but almost secretly, like the wedding at Cana — the bread increases as it passes from hand to hand. And as the crowd eats, they realize that Jesus is taking care of everything,” said Pope Francis.
“This is the Lord present in the Eucharist. He calls us to be citizens of Heaven, but at the same time he takes into account the journey we have to face here on earth,” he said. “If I have hardly any bread in my sack, he knows and takes care of it himself.”
Thousands gather in St. Peter’s Square in Rome on June 19, 2022, to hear Pope Francis’ Angelus reflections. Vatican Media
The pope connected the tangible needs of food with the intangible needs of humankind.
“Sometimes there is the risk of confining the Eucharist to a vague, distant dimension, perhaps bright and perfumed with incense, but rather distant from the straits of everyday life. In reality, the Lord takes all our needs to heart, beginning with the most basic,” he said.
“In the Eucharist, everyone can experience this loving and concrete attention of the Lord. Those who receive the Body and Blood of Christ with faith not only eat, but are satisfied. To eat and to be satisfied: These are two basic necessities that are satisfied in the Eucharist,” he added. “The crowd is satisfied because of the abundance of food and also because of the joy and amazement of having received it from Jesus!”
Jesus Christ’s self-giving presence is key to understanding the Eucharist, the pope said.
“We certainly need to nourish ourselves, but we also need to be satisfied, to know that the nourishment is given to us out of love. In the Body and Blood of Christ, we find his presence, his life given for each of us. He not only gives us help to go forward, but he gives us himself — he makes himself our traveling companion, he enters into our affairs, he visits us when we are lonely, giving us back a sense of enthusiasm.”
“This satisfies us, when the Lord gives meaning to our life, our obscurities, our doubts; he sees the meaning, and this meaning that the Lord gives satisfies us,” the pope explained. Everyone is looking for the presence of the Lord, because “in the warmth of his presence, our lives change,” the pope added.
“Without him, everything would truly be gray,” he said. “Adoring the Body and Blood of Christ, let us ask him with our heart: ‘Lord, give me that daily bread to go forward, Lord, satisfy me with your presence!’”
The pope also prayed that the Virgin Mary may teach us “how to adore Jesus, living in the Eucharist and to share him with our brothers and sisters.”
Statements on Spanish martyrs, Ukraine war
After the Angelus, the pope discussed the Saturday beatification of Dominican religious who were killed in the Spanish Civil War.
“They were all killed in hatred of the faith in the religious persecution that took place in Spain in the context of the civil war of the last century,” the pope said, calling for applause for them. “Their witness of adherence to Christ and forgiveness for their killers show us the way to holiness and encourage us to make their lives an offering of love to God and their brothers and sisters.”
The conflict of Ukraine after the Russian invasion also was a point for prayer, the pope said: “Let us not forget the suffering of the Ukrainian people in this moment, a people who are suffering.”
“I would like you all to keep in mind a question: What am I doing today for the Ukrainian people? Do I pray? Am I doing something? Am I trying to understand? What am I doing today for the Ukrainian people? Each one of you, answer in your own heart,” he asked.
Prayers for Myanmar, World Meeting of Families
Pope Francis also lamented the violence in Myanmar, which has forced many to flee their homes and blocked them from meeting basic needs.
“I join the appeal of the bishops of that beloved land, that the international community does not forget the Burmese people, that human dignity and the right to life be respected, as well as places of worship, hospitals, and schools. And I bless the Burmese community in Italy, represented here today,” he said.
In early 2021 the Myanmar military seized power in the country. Its crackdown on opponents provoked a violent backlash. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has said the conflict has displaced more than 800,000 people from their homes. Of these, 250,000 are children.
Pope Francis also noted that the 10th World Meeting of Families will begin June 22 in Rome and throughout the world. Around 2,000 Catholic families will gather in Rome this week to meet Pope Francis and hear talks on marriage and the faith.
“I thank the bishops, parish priests, and family pastoral workers who have called families to moments of reflection, celebration and festivity,” he said. “Above all, I thank the married couples and families who will bear witness to family love as a vocation and way to holiness. Have a good meeting!”
Pope Francis continued a series of lessons on the Holy Spirit during his weekly meeting with the public in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Aug. 21, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Aug 21, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said Wednesday the person who lives with joy his anointing in the sacrament of confirmation cannot help but spread the fragrance of holiness in the Church and the world.
“We know that, unfortunately, sometimes Christians do not spread the fragrance of Christ, but the bad odor of their own sin,” the pope also warned during the general audience Aug. 21, adding that “sin turns us into bad oil.”
During his weekly public audience in the Vatican’s Pope Paul VI Hall, Pope Francis continued a series of lessons on the Holy Spirit, focusing on the fruits of being anointed with the blessed oil called Chrism in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation.
The audience hall brimmed over with thousands of pilgrims from around the world, some of whom held flags from their countries or waved colored bandanas, eager to catch a sight of the pope.
At the end of the meeting, before praying the “Our Father” and giving his blessing, the pontiff remembered certain countries and territories experiencing war, including Ukraine, Myanmar, South Sudan, and the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Let us pray for peace,” he said, “and let’s not forget Palestine and Israel, that there will be peace there.”
In his catechesis, Pope Francis recalled the baptism of Christ, when “the very Spirit descended on Jesus.”
Christians, he explained, are “anointed in imitation of Christ,” as St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in his Mystagogical Catecheses.
The pope recited the prayer said by the bishop when he consecrates the chrism oil on Holy Thursday: “May those formed into a temple of your majesty by the holiness infused through this anointing and by the cleansing of the stain of their first birth be made fragrant with the innocence of a life pleasing to you.”
“A person who lives his anointing with joy gives fragrance to the Church, gives fragrance to the community, gives fragrance to his family,” the pontiff said.
Quoting from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Francis said, “the fragrance of Christ emanates from the ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ which are ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.’”
“It’s beautiful to find a good person, a faithful person, a meek person, not proud,” he commented.
Sin, the pope emphasized, “must not distract us from the commitment of realizing, as far as we are able and each in their own environment, this sublime vocation of being the good fragrance of Christ in the world.”
“Let us ask the Holy Spirit to make us more conscious [of being] anointed, anointed by him,” he concluded.
Consumerism is losing its significance. Voracious consumption has its after effects. Simple living and high thinking can add life to our life span. Why not go for it?
Consumerism is losing its significance. Voracious consumption has its after effects. Simple living and high thinking can add life to our life span. Why not go for it?