Here and Now with Francis 3/19/16 (Christianity, encounter, culture, family, glory, cross, unity, Church, charism, witness, obedience)

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God’s glory is revealed, instead, on the cross: it is love, which shines there and spreads. It is a paradoxical glory: without noise, without profit, and without applause. But only this glory renders the Gospel fecund.
From an address
Unity. Jesus prays to the Father so that His own “may become perfectly one” (John 17:23); He wants them to “be one” (v. 22), as the Father and He . It is His last, most heartbroken request before His Passion: that there be communion in the Church. [...] Every charism is a grace of God to enhance communion. However, a charism can deteriorate when it is closed or is boastful, when it wishes to be distinguished from others. Therefore, it is necessary to protect it. Protect your charism! How? By following the masterful way: humble and obedient unity....It is always necessary to watch over the charism, purifying eventual human excesses through the search for unity with all and obedience to the Church. [...] This is the fecundity of the Church, which is Mother: it is not an organization that seeks followers, or a group that goes forward following the logic of its ideas, but she is a Mother that transmits the life received from Jesus. [...] Familiarize yourselves with the cultures, the languages and the local usages, respecting them and recognizing the seeds of grace that the Spirit has already scattered. Sow the first proclamation without yielding to the temptation to transplant acquired models: “what is most beautiful, greatest, most attractive and at the same time more necessary” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 35). It is the Good News that must always return, otherwise the faith risks becoming a cold doctrine without life. To evangelize as families, then, living unity and simplicity, is already a proclamation of life, a beautiful testimony... [full text]

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