Here and Now with Francis: 9/16/2023 (Witness, Christ, culture, enthusiasm, faith)

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 From 9-15-2023 Audience


A Heart Expanded by the Unspeakable Sweetness of Love

[B]y contemplating creation, by letting yourselves be challenged by daily events, by experiencing work as prayer, to the point of transforming the very means of your work into instruments of blessing, and finally through people, in those brothers and sisters whom divine Providence leads you to encounter. In all this, you are called to be seekers of God. [...] Indeed, nowadays, in a globalized but fragmented and fast-paced world devoted to consumerism, in settings where family and social roots sometimes almost seem to disappear, there is no need for Christians who point fingers, but for enthusiastic witnesses who radiate the Gospel “in life through life.” This is always a temptation: go from being “Christian witnesses” to “Christian accusers.” There is only one accuser, the devil. We should not assume the role of the devil but of Jesus. We are students of the school of Jesus, of the Beatitudes. [...] [Y]our wider monastery is the world, the city and the workplace, for it is there that you are called to be models of welcome with regard to whoever knocks at your door, and models in preferential love for the poor. This is what it means to welcome yet we are confronted with the temptation to close ourselves off. Today in our society, our culture, even a Christian culture, one of the ways of closing ourselves off from others is through gossip. Gossip “dirties” other people. ... If you are able to change your lives in such a way that you do not speak ill of others, you will have opened the door for your causes of canonization! Move forward in this way. Sometimes it seems that our society is slowly suffocating in the locked vaults of selfishness, individualism and indifference. Gossip locks us into this reality. [full text]

Image by by DMahendra via Creative Commons
Location: Liloan, Cebu, Philippines

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