The grotto at Lourdes where Our Lady appeared. / Alessio Di Cintio/CNA.
Vatican City, Feb 11, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis on Friday encouraged Catholics to ask Our Lady of Lourdes to intercede for them to have a heart more open to encountering other people and their needs.
In a video message for the Feb. 11 feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, the pope explained that “encounter is always opening oneself to others.”
“The opposite of encounter is closing one’s heart,” he said. “Mother, help us not to have closed hearts, because selfishness is a moth that gnaws at the heart from within.”
On Feb. 11, the Catholic Church celebrates the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes. The feast day recalls when the Virgin Mary appeared to a young St. Bernadette Soubirous in a cave-grotto in southwestern France from Feb. 11 to July 16, 1858.
In his message to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in El Challao, Mendoza, western Argentina. Pope Francis said he joined in the shrine’s celebrations and was praying for all those taking part. He also asked for prayers.
He emphasized again the Christian meaning of encounter, which, he said, “is not a handout, it is putting oneself on the line for an idea, it is walking together, avoiding being alone and isolating oneself in order to be together with others, with friends, with family, with the People of God, all together in prayer before the Virgin.”
“That is why we ask the Virgin to help us to be community. Mother, help us to be community,” he said.
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Photo courtesy of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines, Ill. / null
Chicago, Ill., Dec 12, 2021 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Marian devotion is intense among the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe e… […]
Pope Francis’ general audience of April 19, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 19, 2023 / 04:15 am (CNA).
Even when not called to the particular grace of martyrdom, every Christian is called to testify to Christ through his or her life, Pope Francis said on Wednesday.
At his weekly audience with the public April 19, the pope quoted the Church’s dogmatic constitution, Lumen gentium, to highlight a Christian’s obligation to be a positive witness of the faith in both life and death.
“Although martyrdom is asked of only a few,” he said, “‘nevertheless all must be prepared to confess Christ before men. They must be prepared to make the profession of faith even in the midst of persecutions, which will never be lacking to the Church, in following the way of the cross.’”
Pope Francis’ general audience of April 19, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Persecution of Christians, he added, is not just a thing of the past.
“The martyrs show us that every Christian is called to the witness of life, even when this does not go as far as the shedding of blood, making a gift of themselves to God and to their brethren, in imitation of Jesus,” he said.
Pope Francis spoke to a large crowd of people in St. Peter’s Square on a sunny, spring morning.
The current theme of his Wednesday general audiences is “the passion for evangelization.” On April 19, he focused on the topic of martyrdom and the witness it gives others about the Christian faith.
“Today we will turn our attention not to a single figure, but to the host of martyrs, men and women of every age, language, and nation who have given their life for Christ, who have shed their blood to confess Christ,” he said. “After the generation of the Apostles, they were the quintessential ‘witnesses’ of the Gospel.”
Pope Francis’ general audience of April 19, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“The word ‘martyr’ derives from the Greek ‘martyria,’ which indeed means witness,” he explained.
Francis emphasized that the Christian martyrs are not individual heroes who acted alone, but are like a “ripe and excellent fruit of the vineyard of the Lord, which is the Church.”
“Christians,” he said, “by participating assiduously in the celebration of the Eucharist, were led by the Spirit to base their lives on that mystery of love: namely, on the fact that the Lord Jesus had given his life for them, and therefore that they too could and should give their life for him and for their brothers and sisters.”
He called Catholics to remember the many men and women who have given their lives for Christ over the more than 2,000-year history of the Church, especially the numerous martyrs of modern times.
Pope Francis’ general audience of April 19, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Quoting again from Lumen gentium, he said, “the Second Vatican Council reminds us that ‘the Church considers martyrdom,’ this disciple, ‘as an exceptional gift and as the fullest proof of love. By martyrdom a disciple is transformed into an image of his Master by freely accepting death for the salvation of the world — as well as his conformity to Christ in the shedding of his blood.’”
Pope Francis concluded his message by naming some of the Church’s recent martyrs in the country of Yemen, including three Missionaries of Charity — Sister Aletta, Sister Zelia, and Sister Michael — who were shot dead in July 1998 while returning home from Mass.
He also recalled the March 2016 attack on the Missionaries of Charity in Aden, Yemen, in which a gunman killed 16 people, including Sister Anselm, Sister Marguerite, Sister Reginette, and Sister Judith. The Catholic missionary priest Father Tom Uzhunnalil was kidnapped in the attack. He was released 18 months later in September 2017.
Pope Francis’ general audience of April 19, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
The pope pointed out that some of the people killed in the 2016 shooting were Muslims who collaborated with the Missionaries of Charity in their work.
“It moves us to see how the witness of blood can unite people of different religions,” he said. “One should never kill in the name of God, because for him we are all brothers and sisters. But together one can give one’s life for others.”
“Let us pray, then, that we may never tire of bearing witness to the Gospel, even in times of tribulation,” Francis said. “May all the martyr saints be seeds of peace and reconciliation among peoples, for a more humane and fraternal world, as we await the full manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven, when God will be all in all.”
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