Vatican City, Oct 22, 2017 / 05:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis spoke on the importance of both fulfilling our earthly duties and making God a priority, stressing that the two are never in opposition, but are complementary, with the primacy of God giving direction to our daily activities.
“The Christian is called to commit themselves concretely in human and social realities without putting God and Cesar into opposition, but by illuminating the earthly reality with the light that comes from God,” the Pope said.
Giving priority to God and having hope in him “do not lead to an escape from reality,” he said, but rather, “they make industrious that which belongs to him.”
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his Oct. 22 Sunday Angelus address, which coincided with both World Mission Sunday and the feast of St. John Paul II.
In his speech, the Pope centered his reflection on the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, in which the Pharisees question Jesus about whether or not is is just to pay taxes to Cesar.
This meeting constitutes yet another “face-to-face encounter” between Jesus and his opponents, the Pope said, noting that the “thorny” issue of taxes is supposed to be a trap.
However, rather than falling into it, Jesus offers a calm response and “takes advantage of the malicious question in order to give an important teaching, rising above the polemics and opposing sides.”
By looking at the image and inscription of Cesar carved onto the Roman coins and telling the Pharisees to “render to Cesar what is Cesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” Jesus on one hand says that paying taxes to the Roman emperor “is not an act of idolatry, but an act of duty to the earthly authority.”
On the other hand, in his reference to God, Jesus “recalls the primacy of God, asking to give him what is owed to him as the Lord of life, of man and of history.”
While the image of Cesar recalls our rights and duties as citizens of the state, the reference to God symbolically points to the image that is imprinted on every person, which is “the image of God,” the Pope said.
“He is the Lord of all, and we, who were created in his image, belong above all to him,” Francis said, asking pilgrims From the question posed by the Pharisees, Jesus derives a more vital and radical question for each one of us: “to whom do I belong?”
“To our family, our city, our friends, school, work, politics, or the state? Yes, certainly. But above all, Jesus reminds us, you belong to God,” he said, adding that the Lord is the one who has given us all that we have and are.
And therefore, in our daily lives “we can and must live them in renewed knowledge of this fundamental belonging and in the recognition of our heart to the Father, who created each one of us unique and unrepeatable, but always in the image of his beloved Son, Jesus,” he said. “It is a marvelous mystery.”
Pope Francis then led pilgrims in praying the traditional Angelus prayer. Afterward, he noted how yesterday Spanish martyrs Matteo Casals, Teofilo Casajús, Fernando Saperas and their 106 companions were beatified in Barcelona, and prayed that their “heroic example” and intercession would support Christians all over the world who today endure persecution and discrimination.
He also noted how Oct. 22 marks World Missionary Day, which was launched in 1926 by the Congregation for Divine Worship and is now promoted by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Mission Societies.
Francis invited everyone to “live the joy of missionary witness to the Gospel” in their various states of life and urged faithful to support missionaries around the world either financially or through prayer.
To this end, the Pope announced that an “Extraordinary Missionary Month” will take place in October 2019 in order to “nourish the ardor of the evangelizing activity of the Church “ad gentes,” or “to the nations.”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>During Angelus, <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PopeFrancis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#PopeFrancis</a> announced an Extraordinary Missionary Month for October 2019 in order to “nourish the ardor" of evangelization <a href=”https://t.co/3BNXxY2aF3″>pic.twitter.com/3BNXxY2aF3</a></p>— Elise Harris (@eharris_it) <a href=”https://twitter.com/eharris_it/status/922044220646608897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>October 22, 2017</a></blockquote>
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In an Oct. 22 letter marking the centenary anniversary of the publication of Pope Benedict XV’s 1919 apostolic letter “Maximum Illud” on Catholic missions after the First World War, Pope Francis said the main aim for the missionary month is to foster “an increased awareness of the ‘missio ad gentes’ and taking up again with renewed fervor the missionary transformation of the Church’s life and pastoral activity.”
Addressed to Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the letter noted that “Maximum Illud” had called on the Church to transcend national boundaries and bear witness, “with prophetic spirit and evangelical boldness, to God’s saving will through the Church’s universal mission.”
The Pope voiced his hope that the 100th anniversary of Benedict XV’s letter would be an incentive to “combat the recurring temptation lurking beneath every form of ecclesial introversion, self-referential retreat into comfort zones, pastoral pessimism and sterile nostalgia for the past.”
“Instead, may we be open to the joyful newness of the Gospel,” he said, and prayed that in “our troubled times” of war and conflict, the good news that “forgiveness triumphs over sin, life defeats death and love conquers fear,” would be proclaimed to the world “with renewed fervor, and instill trust and hope in everyone.”
He also prayed that the 2019 missionary month would “prove an intense and fruitful occasion of grace, and promote initiatives and above all prayer, the soul of all missionary activity.”
“May it likewise advance the preaching of the Gospel, biblical and theological reflection on the Church’s mission, works of Christian charity, and practical works of cooperation and solidarity between Churches, so that missionary zeal may revive and never be wanting among us.”
In his comments after the Angelus, Pope Francis also offered prayers for peace throughout the world, specifically in Kenya, where there is ongoing debate over their recent presidential elections.
General elections took place in Kenya Aug. 8, and initial results showed that President Uhuru Kenyatta was re-elected with the majority vote. However, his main rival, Raila Odinga, refused to accept the result and fought it in the country’s Supreme Court.
As a result, the vote was annulled and fresh elections scheduled to take place Oct. 17. However, the date of the new election was later changed to Oct. 26.
In his remarks, Francis prayed that Kenya would “know how to face the current difficulties in a climate of constructive dialogue, having at heart the pursuit of the common good.”
[…]
[The pope] has said, “It is a journey that we are called to undertake together as a Church, urged on by the pain and shame of not having always been good guardians,”
Jesus told us to pick up our cross and follow him. He directed his disciples to travel in pairs of two. Where did Jesus claim the Church should carry shame of not having been a good guardian? THE CHURCH needs no apology tour, but Church authorities need to apologize for themselves.
The Pope speaks for himself and does not speak as Jesus taught. Jesus NEVER apologized for himself or His truth. Those in the Church who have not been good guardians should have been and should be excluded from her membership. Those in authority should do that. That is how Jesus told his disciples to handle those who would not listen to the Church.
“…the pope urged the people of God to continue in “the journey of personal and community conversion.”
‘Community’ conversion? Exactly where is this in Scripture or in Church teaching? I think Francis has a good imagination.
[The pope also added]…this process of conversion “urgently requires a renewed formation”
What exactly is the ‘formation’ Francis recommends? A search party consisting of more lost souls? Walking together the world’s common path without purpose to see what can be seen? What about what Jesus taught about conforming lives through His grace, through the sacraments which He gave to the Church and which worked well for the past 1990 years?
Refusing the path to Calvary, refusing the cross of Christ, the Church today seems hell-bent to sanctify the path of the world by seeking a new Church. Why? The hierarchy refuses to accept the sanctify of the given old One.
A very important insight…”The pope said that ‘the culture of death’ leads to sexual abuse, the abuse of conscience, and the abuse of power.”
Exactly so! At the heart (literally) of the “culture of death” is the abortion culture which then enables all of the abuse-of-power and big-picture crises that Pope Francis spotlights during his pontificate, even as he alternately seems to discount the moral clarity of “Veritatis Splendor”…
Namely: that with the “‘negative precepts’ […] it is prohibited–to everyone and in every case–to violate these precepts. They oblige everyone, regardless of cost, never to offend in anyone, beginning with oneself, the personal dignity common to all.” And, “the commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken” (Veritatis Splendor, VS, n. 52). And, “the negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete [!] actions of kinds of behavior as intrinsically evil [!], do not allow for any legitimate exceptions. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the ‘creativity’ of any contrary [!] determination whatsoever” (VS, n. 67).
What, then, of the unanswered dubia? A teachable moment lost?
What, then, of personal conversion (not quite reducible to a “process of conversion” for the overall Church, or to the community’s “co-responsibility, dialogue, and transparency”)? A teachable moment lost?
What, then, likewise, of the duplicitous and notorious Pelosi-Biden tribe? A teachable moment lost?
What, then, of Eucharistic coherence? A teachable moment lost?
What, then, of a “listening,” but also a block-party abuse of vertebrate synodality, as cultured in Petri-dish Germania? A teachable moment infiltrated, accommodated, and betrayed? With more to follow?