Pope Francis in Rio, spoke to young people at the Copacabana beach. Inter alia, dixit:
Dear young people: “Put on Christ” in your lives. In these days, Christ awaits you in his word; listen carefully to him and your heart will be warmed by his presence; “Put on Christ”: he awaits you in the sacrament of Penance, to heal by his mercy the wounds caused by sin. Do not be afraid to ask God’s forgiveness! He never tires of forgiving us, like a father who loves us. God is pure mercy! “Put on Christ”: he is waiting for you in his flesh in the Eucharist, the sacrament of his presence and his sacrifice of love, and in the humanity of the many young people who will enrich you with their friendship, encourage you by their witness to the faith, and teach you the language of charity, goodness and service.
Today, Friday, Francis should hear a few confessions at Rio’s Boa Vista Park.
I bet he’d prefer to hear more than a few.
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But what we get from the media is that Pope Francis is “urging young Catholics to shake up the church and make a ‘mess’ in their dioceses by going out into the streets to spread the faith.”
If the “mess” is stressed more than the “spread the faith” I am very concerned. I also wonder what word was used that translated into “mess” in English.
I truly hope the media picks up on the Penance quote but I won’t hold my breath…
I can not wrap my head around Pope Francis. At time, he makes me uncomfortable. But when I examine my conscience, often times the reason that I am uncomfortable is because of my own failings that I hate to be reminded of.
Perhaps this is what Francis is going to do to our Church. Make the Church examine it’s own conscience.
I do wish he would put more emphasis on the return of the Latin language and the Extraordinary Form. And I squirm a bit when he does things like examine the cars in the Vatican parking lot. But, when he speaks off the cuff and makes powerful testimonies on matters such as this, I can’t help but feel excited about what he may be able to accomplish for Christ in His Church.
@majuscule
Francis said that: “Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise. Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure. Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that. But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out … if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO. ”
And also: “Faith in Jesus Christ is not a joke, it is something very serious. It is a scandal that God came to be one of us. It is a scandal that he died on a cross. It is a scandal: the scandal of the Cross. The Cross continues to provoke scandal. But it is the one sure path, the path of the Cross, the path of Jesus, the path of the Incarnation of Jesus. Please do not water down your faith in Jesus Christ. We dilute fruit drinks – orange, apple, or banana juice, but please do not drink a diluted form of faith. Faith is whole and entire, not something that you water down. It is faith in Jesus.”
Full text: http://www.news.va/en/news/meeting-with-the-youth-from-argentina-gathered-in
This is why I like Pope Francis. He messes with people and spreads some FUD to keep the Curia on the hop (and sometimes maybe a bit too much), but he is serious about God and the Church and saving souls. He’s dead serious and on a mission with that, and I like that a lot.
I’ve started being able to predict him a bit more, though, now that I’ve finally figured his personality. I just ask myself what my grandpa would do to mess with somebody’s head, or to shake somebody’s hand, and sure enough the Pope does it. (At least in terms of trips like Brazil and public behavior.) I’m not sure how an Italian Argentinian Jesuit manages to copy off an Irish/German-American businessman, but there you go. As soon as I find out that the Pope has been finessing his way into inspecting its kitchen for his own peace of mind while eating at a restaurant, I’ll know for sure that Grandpa is sitting on his shoulder! (And if the Curia suddenly became efficient, I’d know that Grandpa was haunting Vatican City….)