Vatican City, Apr 15, 2017 / 01:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- During Easter Vigil at the Vatican Pope Francis noted that many people today mirror the sadness and grief of the women who went to Jesus’ tomb thinking he was still dead.
However, the Resurrection, he said, offers new hope for those who have perhaps lost it.
“That is what this night calls us to proclaim: the heartbeat of the Risen Lord. Christ is alive!” the Pope said April 15.
It is the excitement of this message, he said, that made them hurry back to tell the others that Jesus had risen: “That is what made them return in haste to tell the news. That is what made them lay aside their mournful gait and sad looks. They returned to the city to meet up with the others.”
Like the women, each us has also visited the tomb during the vigil, he said, and urged Christians to “go back” with the women into their cities with news of Jesus’ rising.
“Let us all retrace our steps and change the look on our faces,” he said. “Let us go back with them to tell the news in all those places where the grave seems to have the final word, where death seems the only way out.”
The Pope told them go back and proclaim the truth that “the Lord is alive! He is living and he wants to rise again in all those faces that have buried hope, buried dreams, buried dignity.”
“If we cannot let the Spirit lead us on this road, then we are not Christians,” he said.
Pope Francis spoke during his homily for the Easter Vigil, which he celebrated, as usual, in St. Peter’s Basilica as the culmination of his Holy Week events. Apart from the vigil, Pope Francis will also celebrate Mass in St. Peter’s Square Easter morning and give his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing.
After delivering his homily, Pope Francis administered the Sacraments of Initiation – Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist – to 11 people, one of whom, Ali Acacius Damavandy, is from the United States.
In his homily, Pope Francis said that as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb in the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, it’s easy to imagine their uncertain steps and their “pale and tearful” faces.
These women didn’t run away, but remained steadfast, and were people that had took life as it came and “knew the bitter taste of injustice.” However, they were still unable to accept Jesus’ death, he said.
By imagining the scene as it plays out, we can picture in the faces of these two women the faces of many others who “bear the grievous burden of injustice and brutality,” he said.
“In their faces we can see reflected all those who, walking the streets of our cities, feel the pain of dire poverty, the sorrow born of exploitation and human trafficking,” Francis said, explaining that we can also see the reflection of those treated with “contempt” because they are immigrants.
“We see faces whose eyes bespeak loneliness and abandonment, because their hands are creased with wrinkles,” he continued.
The faces of these women also mirror “the faces of women, mothers, who weep as they see the lives of their children crushed by massive corruption that strips them of their rights and shatters their dreams. By daily acts of selfishness that crucify and then bury people’s hopes. By paralyzing and barren bureaucracies that stand in the way of change.”
Francis pointed to the pain of all those “who, walking the streets of our cities, behold human dignity crucified,” saying this is also reflected in the grief experienced by the two women.
The women can also represent the faces of each of us personally, he said, explaining that like them, many of us can feel driven to continue walking forward and not to resign ourselves to the fact that “things have to end this way.”
While we carry God’s promise of faithfulness inside of us, our faces, the Pope said, often we bear the mark of various wounds, including infidelity on our part or the part of another, or of battles we have lost.
“In our hearts, we know that things can be different but, almost without noticing it, we can grow accustomed to living with the tomb, living with frustration,” he said, noting that even worse, we can also convince ourselves that “this is the law of life.”
By doing so, we “blunt our consciences with forms of escape that only serve to dampen the hope that God has entrusted to us,” and walk, like the women did, the line between the desire for God and “bleak resignation.”
However, with the Resurrection the women suddenly and unexpectedly feel “a powerful tremor,” and hear a voice telling them not to be afraid, because Jesus has risen from the dead.
The message: “Do not be afraid, brothers and sisters; he is risen as he said!” is one that has been passed on from generation to generation, Pope Francis said, explaining that “life, which death destroyed on the cross, now reawakens and pulsates anew.”
“The heartbeat of the Risen Lord is granted us as a gift, a present, a new horizon,” he said, explaining that this heart is given to us and in turn, we are also asked to give it to others as “the leaven of a new humanity.”
In his Resurrection, Christ not only rolled back the stone to the tomb, Francis said, but he also wants “to break down all the walls that keep us locked in our sterile pessimism, in our carefully constructed ivory towers that isolate us from life, in our compulsive need for security and in boundless ambition that can make us compromise the dignity of others.”
Precisely when the religious leaders of the day, in collusion with the Romans, thought they they had the last word, God enters and “upsets all the rules and offers new possibilities,” the Pope said. “God once more comes to meet us, to create and consolidate a new age, the age of mercy.”
This, he said, is the promise that has been present from the beginning and which is “God’s surprise” for his people.
Pope Francis closed by saying that hidden in every life there is a seed of the Resurrection, “an offer of life ready to be awakened.”
He prayed that all would allow themselves to be surprised by this “this new dawn and by the newness that Christ alone can give,” and asked that we not only allow Christ’s loving tenderness to guide our steps, but that we also “allow the beating of his heart to quicken our faintness of heart.”
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Gag us with a spoon, gag us with BS, or gag us with words of misbesotted men who speak the truth of their own devise. Lord, have mercy.
“…the Council has not yet been accepted.” Obviously. So it is that traditionalists take no pleasure in agreeing that certain post-conciliar opes have opted not to accept the literal intentional meaning of the Fathers as they have written in certain Council documents. That explains why the traditional movement will never die.
Yes. Some men do refuse to accept the teaching of VCII, and it seems they cannot get enough of projecting hate, blame, ridicule, and other favored delectable derogation upon some devout faithful. Such a mistake is of epic spiritual proportion. The traditional movement, knowing and loving truth, will live forever in papal infamy. Truth is Christ, and Christ never dies.
Curious that some hierarchs entertain no qualm in judging some truths but elide and deny affronts to others.
Labeling is not getting at problems deriving from misunderstandings of VATICAN II. But a fully pastoral dynamic would give the true lead from VATICAN II and faithfully tend to those who can and do follow it faithfully.
Many groups are persistently at odds with VATICAN II:
– Chinese State Church
– German apostate movement
– Politicians declared for legal abortion, homosexuality, etc.
– Secret society groups like Freemasons
– Sankt Gallen Group
– Clerical globalists
– Vaccine clericalists
– WEF-GAVI Catholics
– Vaccine Elites
– Etc.
Some are destroyers. Some are underminers. Some consider themselves “restorers”. They all want to believe that they are reformists and some will profess to be reforming along with Pope Francis. They will say they are behind the Pope in everything the Pope wants in reform of the Curia and the Vatican bureaucracy; and in the exemplifying of the commandments of openness and fraternity. They think and behave in that manner and the Holy Father seems to be paternalizing it.
If you pay close attention to Archbishop Shevchuk you will discover a host of ways that he is at odds with ….. openness and fraternity ….. that some say IS the meaning of VATICAN II. Plus, in his own style Shevchuk has highlighted how the 4 principles in Evangelii Gaudium can have a “different” connotation and result that at the same time are very highly personalized to him and President Zelensky.
So, on top of being at odds with VATICAN II, these groupings are always doing their own thing and their own extra things.
I am not labeling anyone, only giving the Holy Father’s use of a label of “restorer” its true context. As I understand it the Sankt Gallen group labeled itself; but some people add “Mafia” to the label.
Elias, you may know it was Cardinal Carlo Martini SJ when Archbishop Milan who established approx 1995 the Sankt Gallen Group, Martini nicknamed the radical pope. Cardinal Czerny SJ the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development recently called Cardinal Mario Martini a prophet. We find in this Jesuit league of heterodox gentlemen a distinct pattern of proportional ethics centered on mitigation and favorable outcome.
Although Cardinal Carlo Martini specifically espoused prohibition of abortion Sandro Magister nonetheless notes Martini’s attentiveness to gray areas in moral doctrine. “The cardinal seems too tempted by a mitigated interpretation of things – a perfect example of this is the euphemistic formulas on abortion – in keeping with an incorrigible propensity on the part of the ‘pro-dialogue’ Catholic circles, of which he has always been a point of reference” (Pietro De Marco on Cardinal Martini and abortion in Sandro Magister’s Carlo Maria Martini’s Day After April 2006). Cardinal Martini in his 2012 paperback Credere e conoscere Faith and Understanding, while agreeing with the concept of traditional marriage says it is “not right to express any discrimination on other types of unions.”
There is marked similarity between Martini and Bergoglio [allegedly Martini’s protege] in the espousal of prohibitive ethics in tandem with “a mitigated interpretation of things”, to wit, on abortion and homosexuality. With heterodox Jesuit Jean Claude Hollerich appointed by Jesuit Pope Francis as Synod relator the Jesuit League of Destructeurs is well placed to marginalize the restorers. Perhaps. Whatever transpires in the end Christus Vincit.
“The problem is precisely this: in some contexts, the Council has not yet been accepted. It is also true that it takes a century for a Council to take root. We still have 40 years to make it take root, then!”
On the other hand, in addition to the “restorers,” there are at least as many “deconstructionist” peddlers of the “virtual” Council who also do not yet accept the real Council. The question of the moment might be how a now-demoted curia can still deal with this two-sided problem with restored (!) coherence.
Part of the solution for all parties might be exercising the institutional memory to actually read the documents of the Council (a most remarkable “suggestion” made at the 20th anniversary (!) of the Council, in 1985, by the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops convened precisely to clarify “divergent opinions”); and accountability to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (a “fruit of the Council,” initiated by the same Synod and released in 1992/1994); and maybe much more of what we do see now in the recent papal rebuke of Bishop Batzing—that we don’t need a second evangelical (Lutheran) church in Germany: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/06/14/pope-francis-told-bishop-batzing-we-dont-need-two-evangelical-churches-in-germany/ That summarizes a lot! Also, a response to the dubia, too, consistent with the post-Vatican II (!) Veritatis Splendor; plus, papal support for Eucharistic coherence (a very low bar, indeed) would also signal the more unified and 100-hundred-years-out future direction of the perennial and Eucharistic Church.
Very respectfully, one can notice such details without being a “restorer” in rejection of Vatican II. Quite the opposite.
How would he know?
On the other hand, some of us would like to see further reforms to continue the work of the Council, especially in the areas of evangelization and mission, and more work on the vocation of baptism. It’s a simple fact that the work of the council is unfinished because the Church as a human institution is an unfinished work.
Yea, verily, another half-truth or less to insinuate that “the Church as [is] a human institution…” Instead, given the reality of Pentecost as the origin of the Church, the Church also teaches that “the bishops have by divine institution [!] taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church, in such wise that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ” (Lumen Gentium, 20:2).
So, the Church evolves as an essentially “unfinished work” and essentially a “human institution,” only if the First Ecumenical Council, at Nicaea (325 A.D.), was wrong to shed Arianism.
So, a divine institution, but, yes, partly in human hands. Yet…
As the Body of Christ, we believe: “The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf 1 Tim 6:14, Tit. 2:13)” (Dei Verbum, n. 4). “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).
Peter, the word I used is “as.” Your interpretation “as (is)” is your own wording, and a fake news reply to mine. The Church easily has human elements, readily identifiable. These are open to virtue or flaws and even sin.
Where the ideals and particulars of the Council have failed to take root: this is a manifestation of our human weakness. Never fear, though: God is content to work in human weakness. That, my friend, is an apostolic truth. But it doesn’t mean we can be content to linger in our flaws and failures.
Not entirely as(!) “fake news,” but my intent was to clarify an idea not precluded by your wording (“as”), rather than to contest your likely more precise meaning (not “is”). Thank you, here, for clarifying my clarification. We are on the same page. Are we having fun, yet?
Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to forever guide and teach us. So, yes the mission of this Church continues. Our Church is indeed human because it was established for the descendants of Adam and Eve. However, because it is a family of human souls that is intimately one with Jesus, it has also a divine dimension. So, though Catholics continue to breathe, eat, reproduce etc. like earthly beings, we do have the Holy Spirit and the sanctifying graces that enable us to maintain our oneness with the Son of God.
Has Pope Francis ever spent any time on American soil?
Has he mingled among American Catholic sheep enough to become familiar with their “scent?” But, I answer my own question – Chicago, Washington DC, New Jersey and, now, San Diego. I believe that we understand all too well the “scent” of the particular sheep with which Pope Francis is intimately familiar.
Other than from communing with that close circle of associates, I suspect that PF assimilates his worldview of America by perusing various British tabloids, if he exerts that much effort.
Why cannot a person have a wide Catholic view that encompasses many philosophies? There seems to be a tendency to pigeonhole our Pope by giving him a label or category and then judging him accordingly. In a letter to the Corinthians, Paul warns us not to judge but the leave it to God who will “expose the motives of men’s hearts”. And that applies to all of us. Paul, who grew up in a community that was conditioned by Laws or doctrines, became aware of the role that conscience played. As he told the Romans that those who do not know the Law, their conscience will bear witness. We do, of course, have a memorable example when an adulteress was brought before Jesus. Our Lord knew that she had sinned (did he not tell her to sin no more) but he did not condemn her. This is very significant. Is there something that he saw deep in her soul that all those religious people did not? Our merciful and just Lord sees much more than we can see superficially and so judges differently.
Committing a wrongdoing – no matter how serious – does not necessarily make the wrongdoer a sinner. Our Catechism teaches us that for a wrongdoing – thought, word or deed – to be a sin the person must know that it is wrong and have full consent of the will. When a person who does something wrong because voices told him to do it, is he committing a sin? Does a non-Catholic Christian who divorces and remarries commit a sin? No, because he/she has been conditioned by the religious belief that it is not sinful. Did Jesus sin when he broke the Law pertaining to the Sabbath?
Pope Francis, like Pope JP2 and Benedict16, believes that we should refrain from sinning. There is no rupture in their teachings. It could be that he has a deeper appreciation of the merciful nature of our infinitely loving God.
Ships passing in the night. Yes, “there is no rupture in their teachings,” but there is a rupture between the teachings and what is enabled in practice by informal signaling and other actions, inactions, and silences…
Try to grasp this elementary point…specifically addressed for our edification by Pope St. John Paul II, in anticipation of current subtleties and deceptions. Take, for example, this, from Veritatis Splendor (VS), now part of the Church’s Magisterium, and which, therefore (!), has been rendered invisible since 2013:
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [no longer a moral judgment] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not]” (VS, n. 56).
Really part of the the Church’s formal and teaching Magisterium? Try this:
“This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching [‘Christian moral teaching’], and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (VS, n. 115).
So, what does it mean when sympathizers of the homosexual lifestyle (the lifestyle agenda, not judging the individual persons!) are advanced to high positions, when the poster-child James Martin is given papal photo ops and elevated as a curial consultor, and when the synodal frontrunners Marx/Batzing/Hollerich & Co. each announce (simultaneously!) the needed demolition of both natural law (of which, “the Church is no way the author or the arbiter of this norm” (VS, n. 95), and the Catechism, all robed with the same media techniques as earlier smothered the “real” Second Vatican Council (the clarity of the voted Documents) under the “virtual-media” council of the fluid and so-called spirit of Vatican II?
Disagree if you still must, but at least address and exhibit a rudimentary grasp of the self-evident issue of contention/misunderstanding/likely schism—-
the rupture (documented above) between Francis and his predecessors, and between (your focus on) “teachings” and disconnected categories of action (also above) enabled by Chapter 8 and fn. 351 of Amoris Laetitia (2013) and now being exploited, synodally, by imposter successors of the Apostles.
So, yes, mercy, but within the truth. A work in progress…but scandalously flawed.
To be honest, Peter, I too was at sometime perturbed by these proclamations. I was, like the Pharisees of our Lord’s time, very comfortable with the teachings of the Church. I was aware of right, wrong, good and bad. So, I submitted many posts in which I criticized the Pope. However, I did continue to pray for the Church and our Pope keeping in mind what our Founder emphatically said: on THIS rock I Will build my Church. It soon dawned on me that there was no problem with the Church or the Rock, but that it was in my attitude and failure to truly take into account the teachings of the Church which, in my younger days, good nuns and priests had passed on to me.
Our Catechism unambiguously states that for an act to be deemed a sin, the act must be a wrongdoing. But it goes on to say that the wrongdoer must be be fully aware of it being a wrongdoing, and that it must be committed intentionally, willfully. So, obviously it is not just the act that needs to be considered but also the awareness and the intention.
This is Church teaching as it has always been. Pope Francis, who is affectionately called the Slum Pope by those who know him personally, would have come across many instances among the impoverished, the betrayed spouses and the helpless ones who had to live in accordance with their sad situations. Church teachings apply not only to the educated, well-off Catholics in the West but also to those neglected by the world. This is what makes it Catholic – and Christian (Christ-like).
I now understand Pope Francis, and agree with him on this statement.
Peter and Mal,
According to JPII’s Encyclical “Dives in Misericordia, mercy is experienced when one is merciful. Question: Does man owe mercy to God? Does one give mercy to God when one sins against Him? Are Church bishops acting mercifully toward God, Church members and mankind in general when they overlook or excuse sin? When they fail to teach, explain, or define that in which sin consists? When they redefine sin and ‘pastorally’ enable or encourage its continuance?
“Conversion is the most concrete expression of the… presence of mercy in the human world. The true and proper meaning of mercy…is manifested in its true and proper aspect when it restores to value, promotes and draws good from all the forms of evil existing in the world and in man. Understood in this way, mercy constitutes the fundamental content of the messianic message of Christ and the constitutive power of His mission.” (Paragraph 6, Dives in Misericordia)
He refuses to condemn Putin by name. He refuses to condemn the Chinese authorities for their persecution of Catholics, including the arrest of Cardinal Zen. But Francis has no problem lashing out at traditional Catholics who just want to preserve the traditions and beliefs of the Church which he himself is hellbent on destroying. I bet he can’t even cite which documents and declaration of the Council the “Restorers” supposedly reject.
The sooner his corrupt Pontificate comes to an end, the better. We need a Shepherd, not ab abusive bully.
This is our Lord’s Church and he gives us what we need – not what you or I want.
Mal, Pope Francis used the label “restorer” and it swipes indiscriminately at the faithful.
You can’t accept a label without knowing what the content is and if you did accept it without knowing the content, you would be dishonest. I am not the first to recognize this nor the first to say it; but I am not going to reveal how many have mentioned it, it’s too basic!
On the other hand, there are some professed Catholics who are labeling themselves and professing content inconsistent with the fullness of faith, or, just deficient or questionable; yet,
1. they are insisting they are to be credited as leaders because of “what is in their hearts” and
2. what is going to come out of it is “development” obliging on the way us to wait and see.
I know some Scripture about that and I shall not share it with you.
The Holy Father has propounded 4 “principles” in Evangelii Gaudium. They very nearly match things intuited by Lenin and as such they have nothing to do with St. Vincent of Lerins or the Deposit of Faith or the Catholic Church. Whatever and whatever -but ….. but ….. but the Holy Father himself is not consistent with the offering in those 4 dicta.
Meanwhile the course he seems to be charting might turn out to be be pluralist but right now it’s neither magisterial nor pluralist in the sense of VATICAN II -full circle, nobody can really know what the content is and they must suspend discretion and discernment lest they run to judgment/judgmentalism.
What I do notice is that ever so often, you, Mal, restate stuff about the faith and play a hunch, “It is Pope Francis! Because the Holy Spirit guaranteed it!” Kind of spavined like you’re always hitting some kind of a paydirt. So, okay, you feel snakeblooded with it but the very doctrine already enunciated is, wait and see! The synod still has to decide.
YiHa! I have a notion you are hogtied. YippieYaYo! Time for the Bourbon!
In the link to the CWR article, George Weigel’s latest on conclaves, you will see in the comments where Fr. Morello describes how the original Sankt Gallen Owlhoots is mostly demised but that it is persisting in its heirs who are some tough old coots and va`rmints going exactly plumb nowhere for now.
Needless-to-say the 4 “principles” in Evangelii can not remedy the other malformations highlighted in the document. If anything it accommodates them.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/06/15/demythologizing-conclaves/
“but the very doctrine already enunciated is, wait and see! The synod still has to decide”
Well, not so. This synodal process is not about doctrine. It never has been. Pope Francis emphasized this point on quite a few occasions.
Well then you have said it Mal very much the drygulcher.