In a new catechesis at the General Audience, Pope Francis recalled this Wednesday, February 22, that the Christian “does not live outside the world” but “knows how to recognize in his own life and in what surrounds him the signs of evil, of selfishness.” and of sin.”
In a new catechesis at the General Audience, Pope Francis recalled this Wednesday, February 22, that the Christian “does not live outside the world” but “knows how to recognize in his own life and in what surrounds him the signs of evil, of selfishness.” and of sin.”
On this occasion, the Pontiff returned to St. Peter's Square after a few months in the Paul VI Hall of the Vatican, and stressed that the Christian "is in solidarity with those who suffer, with those who cry, with those who are marginalized, with those who feel desperate.”“At the same time, the Christian has learned to read all this with the eyes of Easter, with the eyes of the risen Christ. And then he knows that we are living the time of waiting, the time of a longing that goes beyond the present.”
“In hope we know that the Lord wants to definitively heal with his mercy the wounded and humiliated hearts and everything that man has disfigured in his impiety, and that in this way He regenerates a new world and a new humanity finally reconciled in his love ”.
In relation to the care of creation, he explained that “we are often tempted to think that it is our property, a possession that we can exploit at our pleasure and for which we do not have to be accountable to anyone.”
However, Saint Paul “reminds us that it is a wonderful gift that God has placed in our hands, so that we can enter into relationship with Him and we can recognize the imprint of His design of love.”
“When we allow ourselves to be taken over by selfishness, human beings also end up spoiling the most beautiful things that have been entrusted to them,” Francis warned.
“With the tragic experience of sin, communion with God is broken, we have infringed the original communion with everything that surrounds us and we have ended up corrupting creation, thus making it a slave, subject to our expiration.”
But “the Lord does not leave us alone” and “this desolating picture also leaves us a new perspective of liberation, of universal salvation.”
“If we pay attention, in fact, everything around us groans: creation itself groans, human beings groan, and the Holy Spirit groans within us, in our hearts.”
Man's groans are "a consequence of our sin and everything around us still bears the sign of our fatigue, our faults, our closed-mindedness," said the Pontiff.
However, "at the same time we know that we have been saved by the Lord and he has already given us the opportunity to contemplate and taste in ourselves and in what surrounds us the signs of the Resurrection, of the Easter that brings about a new creation."