Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae
residence in the Vatican this Friday morning, focusing his remarks on
the attitude of some Christians who seem to be “allergic” to preachers
and overly critical of those who proclaim the Gospel, suggesting that
they are often afraid of letting the Holy Spirit into their lives and
are therefore prone to profound sadness.
In
his remarks to the faithful following the readings of the day, Pope
Francis focused on the day's Gospel, drawn from that according to St
Matthew (11:16-19). There, Jesus compares the generation of his time to
always unhappy children, explaining that they were, “not open to the
Word of God.” Their refusal, he explained, was not of the message, but
of the messenger. “They reject John the Baptist,” he said, who came,
“neither eating nor drinking ,” saying of him that he was “a man
possessed.” They reject Jesus because they say, “He is a glutton, a
drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners.” They always have a reason
to criticize the preacher:
“The people of that time preferred to take
refuge in a more elaborate religion: in the moral precepts, such as the
group of Pharisees; in political compromise, as the Sadducees; in
social revolution, as the zealots; in gnostic spirituality, such as
Essenes. They were [happy] with their clean, well-polished system. The
preacher, however, was not [so pleased]. Jesus reminded them: ‘Your
fathers did the same with the prophets.’ The people of God have a
certain allergy to the preachers of the Word: they persecuted the
prophets, [even] killed them.”
The Pope went on to say that these
people claimed to accept the truth of revelation, “but the preacher,
preaching, no. They prefer a life caged in their precepts, in their
compromises, in their revolutionary plans or in their [disembodied]
spirituality.” They are those Christians, who are always discontented
with what preachers say:
"These Christians are closed, they are
trapped, sad ... these Christians are not free. Why? Because they are
afraid of the freedom of the Holy Spirit, which comes through preaching.
This, then, is the scandal of preaching, of which St. Paul spoke: the
scandal of preaching that ends in the scandal of the Cross. That God
should speak to us through men with limits , sinful men, scandalizes:
and what scandalizes even more is that that God should speak to us and
save us by way of a man who says he is the Son of God but ends [his
life] as a criminal. That scandalizes.”
“These sad Christians,” said
Pope Francis, “do not believe in the Holy Spirit , do not believe in the
freedom that comes from preaching, which admonishes you, teaches you –
slaps you , as well – but it is the very freedom that makes the Church
grow.”:
“Seeing these children who are afraid to dance, to cry, [who
are] afraid of everything, who ask for certainty in all things, I think
of these sad Christians, who always criticize the preachers of the
Truth, because they are afraid to open the door to the Holy Spirit. Let
us pray for them, and pray also for ourselves, that we do not become sad
Christians, cutting off the freedom of the Holy Spirit to come to us
through the scandal of preaching.”
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