Why did Pope Francis visit Benedict XVI? To say happy birthday!

Pope Francis speaking on St. Peter’s Square, Vatican, Oct. 12, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA

Rome Newsroom, Oct 12, 2022 / 03:35 am (CNA).

At his public audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis spoke about the role desire plays in spiritual discernment, comparing it to a compass that points one in the right direction.

“Desire is not the craving of the moment. No. The Italian word, desiderio, comes from a very beautiful Latin term, desidus, literally ‘the lack of the star,’” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 12.

“Desire is ‘the lack of the star,’ of the reference point that orients the path of life,” he continued. “It evokes a suffering, a lack, and at the same time a tension to reach the good that is missing.”

The pope spoke in his general audience about desire as the third “indispensable ingredient” of discernment, after prayer and self-knowledge.

On Aug. 31, Francis began a series of weekly catecheses, or messages, on discernment, which he described as “an exercise of intelligence, and also of skill and also of will, to seize the opportune moment” in order to make a good choice about one’s life.

“Desire, then,” he said in the live-streamed address on Wednesday, “is the compass to understand where I am and where I am going. Actually, it is the compass for whether I am standing still or going.”

Pope Francis addressed how someone can recognize desire within themselves in his message. “A sincere desire,” he said, “knows how to touch deeply the chords of our being, which is why it is not extinguished in the face of difficulties or setbacks.”

“Unlike a momentary craving or emotion, desire lasts through time, even a long time,” he explained.

Pope Francis pointed to some of the pitfalls to knowing the desires of one’s heart; for example, society’s promotion of “the maximum freedom of choice,” while those “choices” are mostly reduced to just what is wanted most in the moment, not what will truly satisfy over the long term.

“We are bombarded by a thousand proposals, projects, possibilities, which risk distracting us and not permitting us to calmly evaluate what we really want,” the pope said, adding that many people go around “with their cell phones in their hands and they are searching, looking,” but never stopping to think or reflect.

“Desire cannot grow like that,” he said. “You live in the moment, satiated in the moment, and desire does not grow.”

Francis said that distraction can cause people a lot of suffering “because they do not know what they want from their lives; they have probably never got in touch with their deepest desire.”

Another pitfall the pope mentioned was the knowledge that one wants to do something but never actually takes action.

“And so certain changes, though desired in theory, when the opportunity arises are never implemented,” he said.

“Often,” he said, “it is indeed desire that makes the difference between a successful, coherent and lasting project, and the thousands of wishes and good intentions with which, as they say, ‘hell is paved with.’”

He recalled that Jesus, before performing a miracle, often questions a person about his or her desires, like he does with the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda in chapter five of the Gospel of John. 

“Jesus asks him: ‘Do you want to be well?’ How come?” the pope said.

He explained that “Jesus’ question was an invitation to bring clarity to his heart, to welcome a possible leap forward: to no longer think of himself and his own life ‘as a paralytic,’ transported by others. … By engaging in dialogue with the Lord, we learn to understand what we truly want from life.”

The paralytic, he continued, is an “example of people [who say,] ‘Yes, yes, I want, I want,’” but in the end, never do anything.

Instead of taking action, we find excuses or complain: “But be careful,” he said, because “complaints are a poison, a poison to the soul, a poison to life because they don’t make you grow the desire to move forward.”

“If the Lord were to ask us, today, the question he asked the blind man in Jericho: ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ how would we answer?” the pope said. “Perhaps we could finally ask him to help us know his deepest desire, that God himself has placed in our heart.”

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Vatican City, Sep 27, 2017 / 03:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis spoke about the enemies of hope that often lead us into discouragement and melancholy, and urged Christians to fight these temptations with the power of prayer.

One of these enemies, he said, is the “demon of noon,” which “wears us out with a busy life just as the sun rises,” but which “surprises us when we are least expecting it.” With this enemy, he said, “the days become dull and boring,” and nothing seems worthy of the effort of “hard work.”

“To have an empty soul is the worst hindrance to hope,” he said. “It is a risk from which no one can be said to be excluded; because to be tempted against hope can happen even when you walk the path of Christian life.”

“That’s why it is important to keep our hearts in opposition to the temptations of unhappiness, which certainly do not come from God,” he said. “And where our forces appear weak and the battle against anguish particularly tough, we can always turn to the name of Jesus.”

We can repeat this simple prayer, he said, found in the Gospels, and prayed by many Christians, which says: “‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner!’ A beautiful prayer.”

Speaking to those gathered for the weekly general audience Sept. 27, the Pope continued his catechesis on the theological virtue of hope.

He started by recalling the myth of Pandora’s Box, which tells the story of a curious woman who opens a box she’s been forbidden to open.

When she does so, all of the evils of the world are then released. But at the end of the story, there is a “glimmer of light,” the Pope said, because after all of the terrible things pour out of the box, Pandora spies one last thing remaining inside: hope.

“This myth tells us why it is so important for humanity to hope. It is not true that ‘as long as there is life there is hope,’ as it is commonly said. But it is the opposite: it is hope that sustains life, which protects, preserves and grows it,” he said.

The Pope also evoked the words of the French poet Charles Péguy, whose poem “The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue,” is a lengthy reflection on hope. In his poem, he says that God is not astonished so much by the faith of human beings, or by their charity, but by their hope.

Quoting from a poem of Péguy, Francis continued: “Those poor children who see how things are and who believe that it will be better in the morning.”

“The image of the poet,” he said, “recalls the faces of so many people who are passing through this world – peasants, poor workers, migrants, in search of a better future…They fought for their children, they fought in hope.”

Hope is not a virtue of people with full stomachs, he continued. That is why, since the beginning, the poor are the first bearers of hope. Even at Christ’s birth the poor shepherds were the first messengers, Francis said.

Sometimes, growing up with everything you could want or need in life can actually be a misfortune, he said, because then you are not taught the virtues of expectation and patience built through hard work and effort.

The person who has been given everything may look young, but actually “autumn has already fallen on his heart,” he said.

Instead, hope is the “thrust in the heart” that encourages people to change, or to leave home to find a better situation in some cases. It is the push to welcome others, “the desire to meet, to know, to dialogue,” he said.

Hope also gives us the courage to share the journey of Christian life, he said, adding that“we are not afraid to share the trip! We are not afraid! We are not afraid to share hope!”

[…]

Image of Father Pedro Arrupe, SJ, beside sealed boxes of documents compiled during the diocesan phase of his canonization cause. / Crédito: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News

Rome Newsroom, Nov 15, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).
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