By At the Sunday Angelus in Castel Gandolfo, the pontiff said God’s kingdom grows quietly through smallness, patience, and service rather than spectacle or power.
Pope Leo XIV warned Sunday against imagining God as “a powerful figure who imposes himself by force, who takes over and dominates, or who arrives triumphantly,” and urged Christians to embrace a Gospel-centered approach marked by humility and trust.
Speaking before the Angelus prayer in Liberty Square at Castel Gandolfo, where he is spending several weeks of rest through Monday, July 27, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading.
Following the parable of the sower, Jesus addresses the crowds through the images of the good wheat and the weeds, the mustard seed and the yeast in the dough, the pope noted.
“These three short parables recall the coming of the Kingdom of God in history, its action in human lives, and the way it grows, expands and transforms the world from within,” Pope Leo said.
Through these images, he continued, Jesus warns against thinking of God principally in terms of power, domination and triumph.
“Instead, God favors smallness, a sign of his discreet love, by which he leaves us free to accept or reject him,” the pope said. “His love makes its presence felt even among the weeds, acts in a hidden and invisible way like the smallest of all seeds, and leavens the dough without making a sound.”
God favors smallness
Pope Leo said believers sometimes expect God to act in dramatic and immediately visible ways.
“We sometimes expect God to do something spectacular; we want him to intervene from on high, immediately uprooting the weeds of evil,” he said.
“We imagine a strong and powerful God, and, unfortunately, we also model our way of being Christians and way of being the Church on this image.”
The Kingdom of God, however, continues to grow quietly even amid evil, the pope said.
“However, the Kingdom of God spreads even amidst the weeds, requiring us to train our vision so we can discern the good that sprouts despite the darkness of evil, and avoiding rash judgments,” he said.
The image of the smallest seed, Pope Leo explained, teaches Christians to be patient as God works through ordinary events and gradual processes.
“It comes like the smallest of seeds and thus calls for patience in accompanying these processes, so that we can recognize it in the little things of daily life and in the simplicity of ordinary existence,” he said.
The kingdom also “grows invisibly like yeast in flour,” the pope continued, freeing believers from discouragement and inviting them to maintain faith even when God appears absent.
“In fact, he is always with us, and his love is always ready to help us,” he said.
Pope Leo then urged Catholics to apply this divine way of acting to both their personal lives and the life of the Church.
“God’s way of acting must also become the way in which we live, both as individuals and as the Church, amidst the reality that surrounds us,” he said.
“We are called to adopt a Gospel-centered approach, without hastily opposing others through arrogant judgments, without imposing ourselves through power and force, and without losing trust in God’s work.”
The pope cited a reflection given by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, during the Jubilee of Catechists and Religion Teachers in the Holy Year 2000.
“As the then-Cardinal Ratzinger said, it is a matter of submitting ourselves to the logic of the seed — which is not that of success and greatness, but that of making ourselves small and serving others,” Pope Leo said.
By embracing this approach, he concluded, Christians can become instruments through which the Gospel quietly transforms the world.
“In this way, we will become like small seeds of the Gospel that sprout, and leavens of love that transform the dough of the world.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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I was hoping Pope Leo would give us the names of those Catholics who are going about evangelizing by ” arrogant judgments.” Or, is he just “virtue signaling.”
“Arrogant” does seem a curious choice of words…
Four points and a question:
FIRST, Leo also cites Benedict who elsewhere remarked that a lofty document-signing approach to interreligious dialogue was not really working. Benedict also turned, instead, to on-the-ground smallness. (The related quote, above: “As the then-Cardinal Ratzinger said, it is a matter of submitting ourselves to the logic of the seed — which is not that of success and greatness, but that of making ourselves small and serving others,” Pope Leo said.)
SECOND, is the conversion thing less about doctrine than it is about healing abysmal solitude, loneliness, and angst…communal or ideological groupings that masquerade some sense of belonging? Instead of a universal belonging which can only be “discovered” and not “constructed” even by our tribal or collectivist fictions?
THIRD, a small thought:
“…religion is in fact that which man does in his solitude; but it is also that in which the human person discovers [!] his essential companionship. Such companionship is, then, more original to us [!] than our solitude. This is true in as much as […] my own human structure is not generated by my own will; it is given to me. Therefore, before solitude there is companionship [!], a companionship that embraces my solitude. Because of this, solitude is no longer true solitude, but a cry calling back that hidden companionship” (Don Luigi Giussani, “The Religious Sense,” Ignatius, 1990).
FOURTH, about this “hidden companionship” Islam seeks, instead, an original purity (like Rousseau?). Islam denies a complicating sin original to ourselves (like Rousseau’s noble savage?) by constructing, instead, a totally inscrutable Allah who imposes himself on history through an “uncreated” and “dictated” and self-contradictory package-deal: the Qur’an and its principle of “abrogation.”
An “arrogant” peace constructed above history versus a small peace discovered in a manger?
QUESTION: How to dialogue with the angst (!) of anti-Christian jihad when this is fast-forwarded from 7th-century camel warfare to a 21st-century quest to acquire nuclear weapons?
And distinct from existential geopolitics, how to evangelize original and redeemed companionship—rather than a sectarian/cosmopolitan and aggressive umma (versus the infidels)? How to be interpersonal in a small way on the now global stage?
Some kind of residue from an early 70’s “rap session”?
The Lefevbreites, of course.
I’m with the Pope on this one. You just need to get into the wrong youtube channel or blog, or find Catholics talking to other Catholics about how they should be doing x, y, or z, and you will find arrogance, judgement, and virtue signalling too. We have a lot of really good and charitable apologists, but there are others as well.
While I will readily grant that the more common problem is to not evangelize at all, you only have to look at how the SSPX has been treated recently by fellow Catholics to see how it can often go, when we get offended, have our sensibilities hurt, or feel justified in condemning others for doing something wrong.
It would have been nice if he’d talked a bit more about how we have a positive obligation to witness to others, and how silence in the face of grave sin, when speaking up might help, is a cooperation in the evil. But he’s not wrong about some people speaking up in ways that bear little ressemblence to charity, or the serious harm done by it.