Vatican: Benedict XVI’s condition serious but stable

Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 09:58 am (CNA).- The redemption of creation takes center stage in Pope Francis’ Lenten message this year, which connects man’s sinfulness to environmental issues.

“Sin leads man to consider himself the god of creation, to see himself as its absolute master and to use it, not for the purpose willed by the Creator but for his own interests, to the detriment of other creatures,” Pope Francis wrote in his Lenten message published Feb. 26.

“Once God’s law, the law of love, is forsaken … it leads to the exploitation of creation, both persons and the environment, due to that insatiable covetousness which sees every desire as a right and sooner or later destroys all those in its grip,” he said.

The pope’s message — originally written on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi in October —  is a reflection on a line from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”

“All creation is called, with us, to go forth from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God,” Pope Francis said. “Lent is a sacramental sign of this conversion.”

Ultimately, Francis points to the traditional Lenten practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as the remedy to the rupture between God, man, and creation caused by sin.

In fasting, we learn “to change our attitude towards others and all of creation, turning away from the temptation to ‘devour’ everything to satisfy our voracity and being ready to suffer for love, which can fill the emptiness of our hearts,” he explained.

Prayer leads us to “abandon idolatry and the self-sufficiency of our ego,” he added.

Through almsgiving, “we escape from the insanity of hoarding everything for ourselves in the illusory belief that we can secure a future that does not belong to us,” Francis said.

The pope warned against living “a life that exceeds those limits imposed by our human condition and nature itself.”

“The sin that lurks in the human heart takes the shape of greed and unbridled pursuit of comfort, lack of concern for the good of others and even of oneself,” Pope Francis said.

“Unless we tend constantly towards Easter, towards the horizon of the Resurrection, the mentality expressed in the slogans ‘I want it all and I want it now!’ and ‘Too much is never enough,’ gains the upper hand,” he said.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican’s Department for the Integral Human Development, explained the logic behind this year’s Lenten message as rooted in the Church’s social doctrine of humanity as an “interconnected and interdependent part of the world” that God created, adding that the Genesis narrative places the human being as “high priest of creation.”

“The redemption of humanity and its liberation from evil and sin express the redemption of all creation from the curse and from all the evils that it suffers because of the sin of humanity,” Turkson said Feb. 26.

He continued, “In this Lenten time, awaiting the celebration of the memory of Christ’s redeeming work for us, so that Christ’s victory over sin and death may also become ours, we ourselves ‘who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly waiting for adoption to children, the redemption of our body.”

“Every action of man, both for evil and for good has cosmic consequences,” Monsignor Segundo Tejado Munoz, undersecretary of the dicastery of Integral Human Development added.

“Every abuse, every theft, every murder, each of these makes a planet disappear. Every action of ours in that is evil, but also the good, has a reaction in creation, the need among all of us in conversion,” Munoz said.

The liturgical season of Lent for 2019 will begin next week on March 6. Pope Francis’ Lenten messages contains a reminder that “the ‘Lenten’ period of forty days spent by the Son of God in the desert of creation had the goal of making it once more that garden of communion with God that it was before original sin.”

“May our Lent this year be a journey along that same path, bringing the hope of Christ also to creation,” he said.

[…]

Pope Francis at his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 15, 2023 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, Mar 15, 2023 / 04:23 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said Wednesday that everyone in the Church is equal in dignity, thus a focus on hierarchical advancement is “pure paganism.”

“Within the framework of the unity of the mission, the diversity of charisms and ministries must not give rise, within the ecclesial body, to privileged categories,” the pope said at his March 15 general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“There is no promotion here, and when you conceive of the Christian life as an advancement, that the one above commands others, because he has succeeded in climbing, that is not Christianity,” he said. “That is pure paganism.”

At his weekly meeting with the public, Francis reflected on the call to apostleship as part of the larger theme of evangelization.

“What does it mean to be an apostle? It means being sent for a mission,” he said, adding that it is also a vocation.

Being an apostle of Christ is not just a matter for bishops or priests, but the call of every baptized person, Pope Francis said.

“Who has more dignity in the Church? The bishops, the priests?” he said. “No. We are all Christians in service to others.”

He said a religious sister is just as an important for the Church as anyone else: the baptized, unbaptized, a child, a bishop.

“We are equal. And when one of the parts believes himself to be more important than the others, and he sticks his nose up like this, he errs,” he emphasized.

“The vocation that Jesus gives to everyone, and also to those who seem to be in the highest positions, is service.”

The pope said if you see someone in a “high” position in the Church who is vain, you should pray for “the poor guy,” because he has not understood his vocation.

“The vocation of God is adoration of the Father, love of the community, and service,” he added.

Pope Francis drew from documents of the Second Vatican Council to illustrate what it means to be an apostle today.

“The Council says: ‘the Christian vocation by its very nature is also a vocation to the apostolate,’” he said, quoting the decree on the apostolate of the laity, Apostolicam actuositatem.

Quoting from Lumen gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the Church, he said apostleship “is a calling that is common, just as ‘a common dignity [is shared] as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection; possessing in common one salvation, one hope and one undivided charity.’”

“It is a call that concerns both those who have received the sacrament of Orders, consecrated persons, and all lay faithful, man or woman.”

Pope Francis addressed the crowd as he said “the laity — all of you, the majority of you are laypeople, all of you — likewise share in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ and therefore have their own share in the mission of the whole people of God in the Church and in the world (Apostolicam actuositatem, 2).”

He encouraged Catholics to consider how they relate to others, both in and outside the Church, in light of apostleship.

“For example, are we aware of the fact that with our words we can undermine the dignity of people, thus ruining relationships? While we try to engage in dialogue with the world, do we also know how to dialogue among ourselves as believers?” he said.

“Listening, humbling one’s self, being at the service of others: This is serving,” he continued. “This is being Christian. This is being apostle.”

“Let us not be afraid to pose these questions to ourselves, to flee from vanity, the vanity of positions,” Pope Francis concluded.

“May these words help us to confirm the way in which we live our baptismal vocation, how we live our way of being apostles in a Church that is apostolic, that is at the service of others.”

[…]

Lights for the celebration of the Hindu festival Diwali. / Abhinaba Basu via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
One day before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet Pope Francis, the Vatican relea… […]