A message from the Bishop of Rome
With our nothing
In the conversation-book The Name of God is Mercy, Francis tells his interviewer: “The Pope is a man who needs God’s mercy.” Did Saint Michael Garicoits not constantly invite us too “to surrender to the infinite mercy of the Lord ... “and to “nourish this sense of profound humility”?
As highlighted by our Superior General, it is striking to find in the words of the Pope some points on which St. Michael himself insisted. Beyond the surprise, this offers a new input to reflect on the words of the Pope and our Founder’s.
God all, I nought. I nothing. Corruption. Behold a steadying formula, a good orientation for our ideas, our feelings, our conduct. This great principle should help us to brush aside all those ideas and contrary opinions which poison man’s life, desecrate the divine life, and end in devilish schemes, practical paganism and impiety.
God all, I nothing. God all. Let Him be the beginning, our middle, and our end in all our works. When preparing a sermon we should attribute to Him everything that is good in the plan and its execution, after which we must count entirely upon Him for success, that is the good of souls. (Saint Michael Garicoits, DS § 52).
« In the documents related to the process of the beatification of Paul VI, I read that one of his secretaries confided that the Pope, echoing the words I have already quoted from ‘Thoughts on Death,’ said, ‘For me it has always been a great mystery of God to be in wretchedness and to be in the presence of the mercy of God. I am nothing. I am wretched. God the Father loves me, he wants to save me, he wants to remove me from the wretchedness in which I find myself, but I am incapable of doing it myself. And so he sends his Son, a Son who brings the mercy of God translated into an act of love toward me... But you need a special grace for this, the grace of a conversion. Once I recognize this, God works in me through his Son. (Ibid.)
« And then there is the homily with which Albino Luciani began his bishopric at Vittorio Veneto, when he said he had been chosen because the Lord preferred that certain things not be engraved in bronze or marble but in the dust, so that if the writing had remained it would have been clear that the merit was all and only God’s. He, the bishop and future Pope John Paul I, called himself ‘dust’. (Ibid.)
« The more conscious we are of our wretchedness and our sins, the more we experience the love and infinite mercy of God among us, and the more capable we are of looking upon the many ‘wounded” we meet along the way with acceptance and mercy. (Ibid.)
« [Advice for a good confession] [A penitent] ought to reflect on the truth of his life, of what he thinks before God. He ought to be able to look earnestly at himself and his sin. He ought to feel like a sinner, so that he can be amazed by God. In order to be filled with his gift of infinite mercy, we need to recognize our need, our emptiness, our wretchedness. We cannot be arrogant. (Ibidem).
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