A message from the Bishop of Rome

Extract from the speech of the Holy Father during the meeting with the priests and consecrated persons in Milan, solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, March 15, 2017.

Today, reality - due to many factors that we cannot stop to analyse here - calls us to take directions more than to strike poses, to struggle for unity more than to attach ourselves to conflicts, to listen to reality, to open ourselves “to the masses”, to the holy faithful people of God, to the whole church. We open ourselves to the whole ecclesial reality. (...) Let’s move on to one last thing. I would not dare to tell you to which actual marginalised people your mission should be directed, because the Spirit has normally inspired charisms to send you to the margins, to go to people and places usually abandoned. I do not believe that the Pope can tell you: “take care of these or those people”. What the Pope can tell you is this: you are few, few, you are what you are, go to the peripheries, go to the margins to meet the Lord, renew the mission of your origins, in the Galilee of your first encounter , Return to the Galilee of that first encounter! And it will do us all good, it will make us grow, it will give us a harvest. I now have in mind the confusion our Father Abraham experienced. He was made to look at the sky: “Count the stars!” - But he could not - “So shall your offspring be.” And then: “Your only son” – (the only one, the other was already gone, but the latter had the promise) - “Bring him up to the mountain and offer me a sacrifice.” From a multitude of stars, to sacrificing his own son: the logic of God is hard to understand. We can only obey. This is the road you must take. Choose the peripheries, awaken the signs of life, set alight the once dead or absent hope of a society that has become insensitive to the pain of others. In our fragility as Congregations, we can become more attentive to the many fragilities that surround us and transform them into spaces of blessing. It is the moment when the Lord will say to you: “Stop, look, there is a goat. Do not sacrifice your only son.“ Go and bring the healing of Christ, go. I’m not chasing you, I am just telling you to go and bring your charism to the mission of Christ.

And let us not forget that Whenever we put Jesus in the midst of his people, joy will be found. For this alone will bring back our joy and our hope, this alone will save us from living with a ‘survival’ mentality. Don’t be fatalistic. Don’t just survive, but come alive! It is only this which will make our life fruitful and keep our hearts beating. Place Jesus where he should be: in the midst of his people.