Pope: Leading people to an encounter with the "person" of Jesus to educate in that freedom that only comes from Him
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Leading people to an encounter with the "person" of Jesus to educate in that freedom that only comes from Him and keeping Him at "the center", so as to "adopt the logic of God", which is mercy and love, to "be the arms, hands, feet, mind and heart of an outward bound Church", rejecting" self-complacency, that can distort and disorientate and lead us to behave like impresarios of an NGO".
This was Pope Francis' mandate to the Italian ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation (CL) on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Movement. Crowds numbering 120 thousand had gathered in St. Peter's Square and Via della Conciliazione, led by the president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, Julián Carrón.
A festive
meeting, preceded by songs and reflections and images and thoughts of the
father of CL, Msgr. Luigi Giussani, who died 10 years ago and to whom the Pope
said he was "grateful to you for several reasons. The first, quite
personal, is the good that this man has done for me and my priestly life,
through the reading of his books and his articles. The other reason is that his
thought is profoundly human and reaches the innermost soul".
"You know - he continued - how important the experience of encounter was
for Don Giussani: not encountering an idea, but a person, Jesus Christ. So he
has educated to freedom, leading to the encounter with Christ, because Christ
gives us true freedom. Speaking of encounter Caravaggio's 'The Calling of
Matthew', comes to mind. I used to go to see it in St. Louis dei francesi,
every time I was in Rome. None of those who were there, including Matthew
greedy for money, could believe the message of that pointed finger, the message
of those eyes looking at him with mercy and chose him as a disciple. He felt
that wonder of the encounter, that wonder of encountering Christ, who comes and
invites us".
"Everything in our lives, today as in the time of Jesus, begins with an encounter. A meeting with this man, the carpenter of Nazareth, a man like everyone else and at the same time different. We think of the Gospel of John, where recounts the first meeting of the disciples with Jesus (cf. 1,35-42). Andrew, John, Simon felt as if he had seen them to their core, known them intimately, and this generated in them a surprise, an amazement that immediately made them feel connected to Him ... Or when, after the resurrection, Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love me?" (Jn 21:15), and Peter replies, "Yes", so that was not the result of a force of will, it was not only the man Simon's decision: it was before Grace, was that 'primerear', when Grace precedes us. This was the breakthrough discovery for St. Paul, for St. Augustine, and many others: Jesus Christ is always first, he precedes us there, waiting for us, and when we arrive, he is already waiting for us. He is like the flower of the almond tree, that blooms first, and announces the spring".
"And you can not understand this dynamic that arouses amazement and adhesion without mercy. Only those who have been cherished by the tenderness of mercy, really know the Lord. The privileged place of encounter is Jesus Christ's caress of mercy for my sin. And so sometimes you have heard me say that the privileged place of encounter with Jesus Christ is my sin. It is thanks to this embrace of mercy that the urge to respond and to change arises, and that may well lead to a different life. Christian morality is not the titanic, voluntary effort, of those who decide to be consistent and succeed, a kind of solitary challenge before the world. No, Christian morality, is something else. Christian morality is a response, it is a response moved by a surprising, unpredictable, even 'unjust' mercy according to human criteria, of One who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me all the same, who repects me embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, waits for me. Christian morality is not about never falling, but about always getting up, thanks to His hand that gathers us".
"And the Churches' path is also this: making God's great mercy known. I said, in recent days, to the new cardinals:" the way of mercy and reinstatement. This does not mean underestimating the dangers of letting wolves into the fold, but welcoming the repentant prodigal son; healing the wounds of sin with courage and determination; rolling up our sleeves and not standing by and watching passively the suffering of the world. The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone for eternity; to pour out the balm of God's mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart. The way of the Church is precisely to leave her four walls behind and to go out in search of those who are distant, those essentially on the "outskirts" of life. It is to adopt fully God's own approach," (Lk 5:31-32)."(Homily, 15 February 2015), which is that of mercy. The Church must feel the impulse to become a joyful almond blossom, that is spring, as Jesus, for all of humanity".
"Today you also remember the sixty years of the beginning of your movement," born in the Church - as Benedict XVI said - born in the Church not by the will of an organized hierarchy but originating from a renewed encounter with Christ and thus, we can say, by an impulse derived ultimately from the Holy Spirit"(Address to the pilgrimage of Communion and Liberation, March 24, 2007: Teachings III, 1 [2007], 557). After sixty years, the original charism has not lost its freshness and vitality. But, remember that your charism is not the centre, it is: Jesus Christ! When I put my spiritual method, my spiritual path, my way to implement it at the centre of everything, I am taking the wrong path. All spirituality, all the charisms in Church must be 'decentralized': at the center there is only One: the Lord! So when Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians speaks of charisms, of this reality which is so beautiful in the Church, the Mystical Body, he concludes speaking of love, that is, that which comes from God, that which is proper to God, and that allows us to imitate him. Never forget this, to be decentralized. And moreover not to preserve your charism in a bottle of distilled water! Fidelity to the charism does not mean 'petrify' - the devil 'petrifies', do not forget this - it does not mean writing it down on a parchment or framing it. The reference to the legacy that Don Giussani left us must not be reduced to a museum of memories, decisions, rules of conduct. Rather fidelity to tradition, but fidelity to tradition - as Mahler said - 'means keeping the fire alive, not worshiping the ashes'. Don Giussani would never forgive you if you lost your freedom and transformed yourselves into museum guides or worshipers of ashes. Keep alive the flame of memory of that first encounter and be free !. So, centered in Christ and the Gospel, you can be the arms, hands, feet, mind and heart of an 'outward-bound' Church'. The Churches' path is to go out to distant peripheries, to serve Jesus in every person who has been marginalized, abandoned, faithless, disappointed by the Church, a prisoner of his own selfishness".
"Being outward
bound also means rejecting the tendency to be self-referential in all of its
forms, it means being able to listen to those who are not like us, learning
from everyone, with sincere humility. When we are slaves of the self we end up
cultivating a 'spirituality label': 'I am CL', this is the label, and we fall
into a thousand traps that leads to self-complacency, that can distort and
disorientate and lead us to behave like impresarios of an NGO".
"Dear friends, I would like to finish with two very significant quotes from
Don Giussani, one from the beginning and the end of his life. The first:"
Christianity is never realized in history as fixity of positions to defend,
which will relate to the new as pure antithesis; Christianity is the principle
of redemption, which takes on the new, saving it "(Bringing Hope. First
writings, Genoa 1967, 119). The second: "I never 'founded' anything, and
moreover I believe the genius of the Movement that I saw being born lies in
having felt the urgency to proclaim the need to return to the elementary
aspects of Christianity, namely the passion of the Christian fact as such in
its original elements, and that's it" (Letter to John Paul II, 26 January
2004 on the occasion of 50 years of Communion and Liberation).
.png)
