Pope Francis  October 2019

Missionary Spring in the Church

In this extraordinary missionary month, let us pray that the Holy Spirit engender a new missionary spring in the Church. 

Today, a new impulse to the Church’s missionary activity is needed to face the challenge of proclaiming Jesus and his death and resurrection.
Reaching the peripheries—the human, cultural, and religious settings still foreign to the Gospel: this is what we call the missio ad gentes.
We must also remember that the soul of the Church’s mission is prayer.
In this extraordinary missionary month, let us pray that the Holy Spirit may engender a new missionary spring for all those baptized and sent by Christ’s Church. 

Pope Francis  Angelus 20.10.19

The World Missionary Day, which is celebrated today, is a good opportunity for every baptized person to become more aware of the need to cooperate in the proclamation of the Word, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God with a renewed commitment.

Pope Francis Opening of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region 06.10.19

The Church is always on the move, always going out and never withdrawn into itself. Jesus did not come to bring a gentle evening breeze, but to light a fire on the earth.

Pope Francis - World Day of Care for Creation  01.09.19

Tragically, the human response to this gift has been marked by sin, selfishness and a greedy desire to possess and exploit..
The environment itself is endangered: something good in God’s eyes has become something to be exploited in human hands. Deterioration has increased in recent decades: constant pollution, the continued use of fossil fuels, intensive agricultural exploitation and deforestation are causing global temperatures to rise above safe levels. The increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather phenomena and the desertification of the soil are causing immense hardship for the most vulnerable among us. Melting of glaciers, scarcity of water, neglect of water basins and the considerable presence of plastic and microplastics in the oceans are equally troubling, and testify to the urgent need for interventions that can no longer be postponed.

We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own...

I strongly encourage the faithful to pray in these days...

It is also a season to reflect on our lifestyles, and how our daily decisions about food, consumption, transportation, use of water, energy and many other material goods, can often be thoughtless and harmful...
Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, towards forms of clean energy and a sustainable and circular economy...

This too is a season for undertaking prophetic actions.

Many young people all over the world are making their voices heard and calling for courageous decisions. They feel let down by too many unfulfilled promises, by commitments made and then ignored for selfish interests or out of expediency. The young remind us that the earth is not a possession to be squandered, but an inheritance to be handed down. They remind us that hope for tomorrow is not a noble sentiment, but a task calling for concrete actions here and now. We owe them real answers, not empty words, actions not illusions...

The forthcoming United Nations Climate Action Summit is of particular importance. There, governments will have the responsibility of showing the political will to take drastic measures to achieve as quickly as possible zero net greenhouse gas emissions and to limit the average increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius with respect to pre-industrial levels...

May God, “the lover of life” (Wis 11:26), grant us the courage to do good without waiting for someone else to begin, or until it is too late.

The Gospel in your pocket 

Pope Francis - Holy Mass, Santa Marta ( Domus Sanctae Marthae) 15.10.19

Hypocrisy is, appearing one way but acting in another. It is to think secretly different from what the appearance is.

 A Christian who does not know how to accuse themselves is not a good Christian and risks falling into hypocrisy.

Pope Francis - Holy Mass, Santa Marta ( Domus Sanctae Marthae) 08.10.19

The Lord is stubborn in His mercy. He never leaves us, he knocks on the door of the heart till the end. He’s always there.
"I am a Christian on condition that things are done this way." It is this "as long as" that keeps so many Christians in their own ideas and end up in ideology: it is the bad path from faith to ideology. And today there are so many. These Christians are afraid: to grow up, to the challenges of life, of the challenges of the Lord, of the challenges of history, attached to their convictions, in their first convictions, in their own ideologies.
The Lord approaches all situations without disgust. Things do not disgust the Lord, our sins don’t disgust. He approaches as He approached to caress the lepers and the sick. Because He came to heal, He came to save, not to condemn.

Pope Francis - Holy Mass, Santa Marta ( Domus Sanctae Marthae) 03.10.19

The encounter with the Word of God fills us with joy, and this joy is my strength, it is our strength.

"He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Lk 24:45).  

A Sunday given over entirely to the word of God, so as to appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people - the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Christ is alive! He is our hope, and in a wonderful way he brings youth to our world, and everything he touches becomes young, new, full of life. The very first words, then, that I would like to say to every young Christian are these: Christ is alive and he wants you to be alive!