Here and Now with Francis 11/17/15 (Christian identity, worldliness)

By Anonymous

From a homily
Worldliness, apostasy, persecution. Worldliness in life is to do what the world does. It’s saying: "We put up for auction our identity card; we are equal to everyone. " Thus, many Jews disowned the faith and fell away from the Holy Alliance. And what seemed so rational- 'we are like everyone else, we are normal' - became their destruction. Then the king recommended that his whole kingdom should be one people - the one thought; worldliness - and each abandoned their own customs…That is, worldliness that leads you to one unique thought, and to apostasy. No differences are permitted: all are equal. And in the history of the Church, the history we have seen, I think of a case, where religious feasts were renamed - the birth of the Lord has another name – in order to erase its identity…This is the deception of worldliness, and why Jesus asked the Father, at that Supper: 'Father, I do not ask you to remove them from the world, but keep them from the world', this mentality, this humanism, which is to take the place of the true man, Jesus Christ, that comes to take away the Christian identity and brings us to the single thought: 'They all do it, why not us?'. This, in these times, should make us think: what is my identity? Is it 'Christian or worldly? Or do I say to myself Christian because I was baptized as a child or was born in a Christian country, where everyone is Christian? Worldliness that comes slowly, it grows, it justifies itself and infects: it grows like the root, it defends itself - 'but, we do as others do, we are not so different' -, always looking for a justification, and eventually it becomes contagious, and many evils come from there. [link]

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