Pope’s Morning Homily: Logic of the Day After Tomorrow... from ZENIT in Roswell, Georgia, United States

Pope’s Morning Homily: Logic of the Day After Tomorrow... from ZENIT in Roswell, Georgia, United States
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Pope’s Morning Homily: Logic of the Day After Tomorrow by Deborah Castellano Lubov

“It is a sign of maturity to understand well the logic of the past. It is a sign of maturity to move in the logic of the present – in both that of yesterday and that of today,” Pope Francis has said, stressing, “It is also a sign of maturity to have prudence to see the logic of tomorrow, of the future.
According to Vatican Radio, the Pontiff said this during his daily morning Mass today, as he reflected on the “logic” of Christian faith.
This ‘logic’ of the faith, he explained, is the fundamental way of thinking that arises from real assent to the truth claims that Christianity advances, and the ‘logic’ of “the day after tomorrow,” he shared, is one that looks forward to the resurrection of the body.
“It takes a great grace of the Holy Spirit,” Francis admitted, “to understand this logic of the day after tomorrow – after the transformation – when He will come and take us – all changed – on clouds, to stay forever with Him.”
Logic of the Risen Christ
The Holy Father drew his inspiration this morning from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (15:12-20), in which the Apostle to the Gentiles, specifically addresses the certainty of Christian faith in bodily resurrection, rooted in our certainty that Christ is risen from the dead.
The Pontiff stressed that this ‘day after tomorrow’ logic is the logic of the Risen Christ. “It is easy for all of us to enter into the logic of the past, because it is concrete,” and it is also “easy to enter into the logic of the here-and-now, because we see it.”
However, when we look to the future, Francis commented, then we think, it is “better not to think,” or at least, to not think it all the way through.
“The logic of yesterday is easy. The logic of today is easy. The logic of the future is easy: all die. But the logic of the day after tomorrow, this is difficult. And this is what Paul wants to preach today: the logic of the day after tomorrow. How will it be? How will He be? The resurrection: Christ is risen. Christ is risen and it is quite clear that He has not been raised as a ghost. In the passage from Luke about the resurrection [we read]: ‘But touch me.’ A ghost has no flesh, no bones. ‘Touch me. Feed me.’ The logic of the day after tomorrow is the logic in which enters the flesh.”
The Pope observed how we ask ourselves how the sky will be, or whether “we will all be there,” but, “we do not reach what Paul wants us to understand – this logic of the day after tomorrow.”
When we think that “everything will be spiritual” and “we are afraid of flesh,” the Jesuit Pope warned, “we betray a certain Gnosticism,”
Do not forget, he said, “this was the first heresy” that the apostle John condemns: “Who says that the Word of God does not come in the flesh is Antichrist”:
“We are afraid to accept and bear the ultimate consequences to the flesh of Christ. a spiritualistic piety is easier, a gossamer pietism; but to enter into the logic of the flesh of Christ, this is difficult. And this is the logic of the day after tomorrow. We will be resurrected as Christ is risen, with our flesh.”
While recalling that the early Christians asked about how Jesus was resurrected, Francis pointed out that it is in the faith in the resurrection of the body, that the works of mercy have their deepest root cause. Francis also recalled how the Apostle Paul stresses how our bodies will be transformed.
The Lord “lets Himself be seen, and touched, and he ate with the disciples after the Resurrection,” Francis reminded the faithful, noting this “is the logic of the day after tomorrow, one that we find difficult to understand.”
Pope Francis concluded, praying for faithful to ask the Lord for the grace of this faith to enter into this logic.
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BREAKING: Pope Francis Will Meet With Nice Victims’ Loved Ones by Deborah Castellano Lubov

In an alert from the Holy See Press Office this morning, the Vatican announced: “On Saturday, Sept. 24, at noon, the Holy Father will receive relatives and loved ones of the victims of the attack in Nice, in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.’
The Pope, in a variety of gestures, words, and telegrams, condemned the July 14 terrorist attack, in which 84 people lost their lives and more than 100 were injured after being hit by a truck driven at full speed through a crowd attending a firework display to celebrate Bastille Day, the French national holiday.
The next day, Pope Francis, through Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, sent a telegram to Bishop André Marceau of Nice, France, following the the attack: “As France was celebrating her national holiday, the country was again struck by blind violence, this time in Nice, claiming many victims, including children. Once again condemning such acts, His Holiness Pope Francis expresses his profound sadness and his spiritual closeness to the French people,” the telegram read.
“He entrusts to the mercy of God those who have lost their life, and joins fully in the suffering of the families afflicted. He expresses his sympathy with the injured, as well as with all those who involved in the rescue efforts, and asks that the Lord support all of them in their grief. Imploring of God the gift of peace and harmony, he invokes divine blessings upon the mourning families and all France,” it concluded.
Also during the Pope’s July 18 Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, he decried the attacks saying: “The pain of the massacre Thursday evening in Nice, in which many innocent lives were ‘mowed down,’ including many children, is alive in our hearts.”
“May God, the good Father, welcome all the victims into His peace, sustain the injured and comfort their families; May He dissolve every project of terror and death, so that man no longer dares to spill his brother’s blood,” he said.
In a declaration by the Vatican immediately after the attack, retired director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi said: ‘We condemn in the strongest way every demonstration of senseless violence, of hatred, terrorism and any attack against peace.’
In the period following the tragedy, Pope Francis expressed clearly his desire to meet with loved ones of the attack, and this audience will be the realization of that wish.
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Pope Decries Nice attack during Angelus: https://zenit.org/articles/pope-decries-nice-attack-during-angelus/
Pope Sends Telegram for Attack: https://zenit.org/articles/pope-francis-sends-telegram-for-tragedy-in-nice/
Vatican’s declaration on Nice Attack: https://zenit.org/articles/vaticans-declaration-on-tragedy-in-nice/
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Pope’s Address to New Bishops by ZENIT Staff

Today Pope Francis received in audience the participants in an annual course of formation for new bishops, organized jointly by the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
Here is a ZENIT translation of the Pope’s address:
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Dear Brothers, good morning! You are almost at the end of these fruitful days spent in Rome to further your reflection on the richness of the mystery to which God has called you as Bishops of the Church. I greet with gratitude the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. I greet Cardinal Ouellet and I thank him for his kind, fraternal words. In the persons of Cardinal Ouellet and of Cardinal Sandri, I would like to thank them for the generous work carried out for the appointment of Bishops and for the commitment in the preparation of this week. I am happy to receive you and to be able to share some thoughts with you, which come to the heart of the Successor of Peter, when I see before me those who have been “caught” by God’s heart to guide His Holy People.
The thrill of having been loved first
Yes! God precedes you in His loving knowledge! He has “caught” you with the hook of his amazing mercy. His nets were mysteriously tightened and you could do none other than let yourselves be captured. I know well that a thrill still pervades the memory of His call that came through the voice of the Church, His Bride. You are not the first to be suffused by such a thrill.
Moses was also, who thought he was alone in the desert and discovered, instead, that he was tracked down and drawn by God who entrusted His Name to him, not for himself, but for His people (cf.Exodus3). He entrusted His Name to him for the people; do not forget this. And the cry of grief of His people continues to rise to God, and know that this time it is your name that the Father wishes to pronounce, so that you pronounce His Name to the people.
So was Nathaniel, who, seen when he was still “under the fig tree” (John1:48) with astonishment finds himself custodian of the vision of the heavens that open definitively. See, the life of so many is still deprived of this opening that gives access to on high, and you were seen from afar to guide to this end. Do not be content with less! Do not stop halfway!
So was the Samaritan woman, “known by the Master at the village well, who then calls her fellow countrymen to encounter Him who has the Living Water (cf. John 4:16-19). It is important to be aware that in your Churches it is not necessary to seek “from one sea to another,” because the Word for which the people hunger and thirst can be found on your lips (cf. Amos 8:11-13).
The Apostles were also suffused by such a thrill when “the thoughts of their hearts “ were revealed; with effort they discovered the access to the secret way of God, who dwells in little ones and hides Himself from the self-sufficient (cf. Luke 9:46-48). Do not be ashamed of the times when you were also touched by this distance from God’s thoughts. Instead, abandon the pretext of self-sufficiency and entrust yourselves as children to Him who reveals His Kingdom to little ones.
Finally, the Pharisees were shaken by such a thrill, when they were often unmasked by the Lord who knew their thoughts, so pretentious as to want to measure God’s power with the narrowness of their own look and thus blasphemed by murmuring against the sovereign liberty of His salvific love (Matthew 12:24-25). God spare you from rendering this thrill vain, of domesticating it and emptying it of its “destabilizing” power. Let yourselves be “destabilized”: this is good for a Bishop.
Admiral condescension!
It is good to let oneself be pierced by the loving knowledge of God. It is consoling to know that He truly knows who we are and is not alarmed by our smallness. It is reassuring to keep in our heart the memory of His voice that in fact called us, despite our insufficiencies. It gives peace to abandon oneself to the certainty that it will be Him, and not us, who will bring to fulfilment what He Himself has initiated.
So many mask and hide themselves today. They like to create personages and invent profiles. They make themselves slaves of the miserable resources that they scrape together and to which they cling as if it were enough to buy the love that has no price. They do not endure the thrill of knowing themselves known by Someone who is greater and does not scorn our smallness, He is more Holy and does not reproach our weakness; He is truly good and is not scandalized by our wounds. Let it not be so for you: let yourselves be suffused by this thrill; do not remove or silence it.
Cross the heart of Christ, the true Door of Mercy
For all this, I invite you to live intensely next Sunday — when crossing the Holy Door of the Jubilee of Mercy, which has drawn millions of pilgrims of the City and the World to Christ –, a personal experience of gratitude, of reconciliation, of total entrustment, of delivering your life without reservations to the Pastor of Pastors.
Crossing Christ, the only Door, fix your gaze in His gaze. Let Him reach you “miserando atque eligendo.”
The most precious richness you can take from Rome at the beginning of your episcopal ministry is the awareness of the Mercy with which you were looked at and chosen. The only treasure that I ask you not to let rust in you is the certainty that you are not abandoned to your own strength. You are Bishops of the Church, participants of one Episcopate, members of an indivisible College, firmly grafted as humble shoots onto the vine, without which you can do nothing (John 15:48). Because now you cannot go along anywhere, because you carry the Bride entrusted to you as a seal imprinted on your soul, in crossing the Holy Door , do so carrying on your shoulders your flock: not by yourselves! — with the flock on your shoulders, carry in your heart the heart of your Bride, of your Churches.
The task of rendering Mercy pastoral
It is not an easy task. Ask God, who is rich in mercy, the secret to render His Mercy pastoral in your dioceses. In fact, it is necessary that Mercy form and inform the pastoral structures of our Churches. It is not about lowering the needs or selling our pearls cheaply. Instead, the sole condition that the precious pearl puts to those that find it is that of not being able to claim less than all; its only claim is to awaken in the heart of one who finds it the need to risk everything to possess it.
Do not be afraid to propose Mercy as the summary of all that God offers to the world, because man’s heart cannot aspire to anything greater. If that were not enough to “bend what is rigid, warm what is cold, to straighten what is crooked,” what else would have power over man? Then we would be desperately condemned to impotence. Would our fears perhaps have the power to oppose walls and reveal openings? Perchance, are our insecurities and mistrusts able to arouse sweetness and consolation in solitude and abandonment?
As my venerable and wise Predecessor taught, it is “Mercy that puts a limit to evil. In it is expressed the altogether peculiar nature of God – His holiness, the power of truth and of love.” It is “the way with which God opposed the power of darkness with His different and divine power,” in fact “that of Mercy” (Benedict XVI, Homily, April 15, 2007). Therefore, do not let yourselves be frightened by the arrogant insinuation of the night. Keep intact the certainty of this humble power with which God knocks at the heart of every man: holiness, truth and love. To render Mercy pastoral is none other than to make of the Churches entrusted to you houses that shelter holiness, truth and love. They shelter as guests come from on high, of which one cannot take possession, but must always be served and repeat: Lord “do not pass by your servant” (Genesis 18:3); it was Abraham’s request.
Three recommendations to render Mercy pastoral
I would like to offer you three little thoughts as a contribution to this enormous task that awaits you: through your ministry, rendering Mercy pastoral, namely, accessible, tangible, to be found.
Be Bishops capable of enchanting and attracting.
Make of your ministry an icon of Mercy, the only force capable of seducing and attracting in a permanent way the heart of man. Even the thief at the last hour let himself be enthralled by Him who “had done nothing wrong” (cf. Luke 23:41). On seeing Him pierced on the cross, they beat their chest confessing what they could never have recognized on their own, had they not been moved by that love that they had never known and which nevertheless gushed freely and abundantly! A distant and indifferent god can be ignored, but one cannot easily resist a God who is so close and more than that, wounded out of love. The kindness, the beauty, the truth, the love, the goodness – see what we can offer this mendicant world, even if in half broken bowls.
However, it is not about attracting to oneself: this is a danger! The world is tired of lying charmers. And I allow myself to say: of “fashionable “ priests or “fashionable” Bishops. The people “sense” – the people of God have the sense of God – the people “sense” and move away when they recognize narcissists, manipulators, defenders of their own causes, preachers of vain crusades. Instead, try to second God, who has already introduced Himself before your arrival.
I think of Eli with young Samuel, in the First Book of Samuel. Although it was a time in which “the word of the Lord was rare; […] there were no frequent visions” (3:1), God, however, was not resigned to disappear. Only on the third time, the sleepy Eli understood that the young Samuel had no need for his answer but that of God. I see the world today as a confused Samuel, needy of one who can distinguish, in the great noise that disturbs his agony, the secret voice of God who calls him. Useful are persons that are able to make emerge from today’s erroneous hearts the humble stammering: “Speak, Lord” (3:9). Even more useful are those that foster silence, which renders this word heard.
God never gives up! It is we who, used to surrendering, often accommodate ourselves, preferring to let ourselves be convinced that they have really been able to eliminate Him and we invent bitter discourses to justify the sloth that blocks us in the immobile sound of vain complaints.
Be Bishops capable of initiating those who have been entrusted to you
All that is great is in need of a way of being able to get in – all the more so divine Mercy, which is inexhaustible! Once gripped by Mercy, it exacts an introductive way, a path, an initiation. Suffice it to look at the Church, Mother in generating for God and Teacher, in initiating those that she generates so that they understand the truth in fullness. Suffice it to contemplate the richness of her Sacraments, a source to be often revisited, also in our pastoral care, which does not wish to be other than the maternal task of the Church to nourish those that are born of God and through Him. God’s Mercy is the only reality that enables man not to be lost definitively, even when unfortunately he seeks to flee from its fascination. In it man can always be certain of not slipping into that chasm in which he finds himself deprived of origin and destiny, of meaning and horizon.
Christ is the face of Mercy. In Him it remains a permanent and inexhaustible offer; in Him it proclaims that no one is lost – no one is lost! Everyone is unique for Him! — the one sheep for which He risks in the storm; the only coin bought with the price of His blood; the only child who was dead and is alive again (cf. Luke 15). I beg you not to have another point of view when looking at your faithful than that of their oneness, also of not neglecting any attempt to reach them, of not sparing any effort to recover them.
Be Bishops capable of initiating your Churches in this abyss of love. Today fruits are asked too much from trees that have not been sufficiently cultivated. The sense of initiation has been lost, and yet in the truly essential things of life access is only through initiation. Think of the educational emergency, of the transmission of contents and values, think of the affective illiteracy, of vocational itineraries. Of discernment in families, of the search for peace: all this requires initiation and guided ways, with perseverance, patience and constancy, which are the signs that distinguish the good Pastor from the mercenary.
There comes to mind Jesus who initiates His disciples. Take the Gospels and observe how the Master introduces His own with patience in the Mystery of His own person and in the end, imprints His person in them, He gives the Spirit , “who will guide them into all truth” (cf. John 16:13). I am always struck by an annotation of Matthew during the discourse of the parables that says this: “Then He left the crowds and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying …” (13:36). I would like to pause on this apparently irrelevant annotation. Jesus enters the house,in intimacy with His own, the crowd remains outside, the disciples approach Him, asking for explanations. Jesus was always immersed in the things of His Father, with whom He cultivated intimacy in prayer. Therefore, He was able to be present to Himself and to others. He went out to the crowds, but He had the freedom to re-enter.
I recommend to you the care of intimacy with God, source of the possession and delivery of Himself, of the liberty to go out and to return. Be Pastors that are able to return home with your own, of arousing that healthy intimacy that enables them to approach you, to create that trust that allows the question: “Explain to us.” It is not just any explanation, but of the secret of the Kingdom. It is a question addressed to you personally. The answer cannot be delegated to someone else. One cannot let it go until later because one is always on the move, in an imprecise “elsewhere,” going somewhere and returning from somewhere, often not very firm with oneself.
I beg you to take care with special solicitude the structures of initiation of your Churches, particularly the seminaries. Do not let yourselves be tempted by the numbers and the quantity of vocations, but rather look for the quality of the discipleship — neither number nor quantity only quality. Do not deprive seminarians of your firm and tender paternity. Make them grow to the point of acquiring the freedom to be in God “like a child quieted at its mother’s breast” (cf. Psalm 131:2); not prey to their own whims and slaves of their frailties but free to embrace all that God asks of them, also when it does not seem sweet as the maternal womb was in the beginning. And pay attention when some seminarian takes refuge in rigidity: under this there is always something nasty.
Be Bishops that are capable of accompanying
Allow me to give you one last recommendation to render Mercy pastoral. And here I am obliged to take you back to the road to Jericho to contemplate the heart of the Samaritan that tears like the womb of a mother, touched by mercy in face of that nameless man fallen into the hands of brigands. First of all was this letting himself be lacerated by the vision of the wounded, half dead man and then comes the impressive series of verbs we all know. Verbs, not adjectives, as we often prefer. Verbs in which mercy is conjugated.
This is precisely <what it means> to render Mercy pastoral: to conjugate it in verbs, to render it palpable and operative. Men are in need of Mercy; although unaware of it, they are in search of it. They know well they are wounded, they feel it, they know well they are “half dead” (cf. Luke10:30), although being afraid of admitting it. When they see Mercy approaching unexpectedly, then exposing themselves they stretch out their hand to beg for it. They are fascinated by the capacity to stop, when so many pass by, of bending down, when a certain rheumatism of spirit impedes bending; of touching the wounded flesh, when the preference prevails for all that is aseptic.
I would like to pause on one of the verbs conjugated by the Samaritan. He accompanies the man, found by chance, to the inn; he takes charge of his fate. He is interested in this healing and his tomorrow. What he had already done was not enough for him. Mercy, which had broken his heart, needs to be poured out and to gush forth. It cannot be plugged. It cannot be stopped. Although he was only a Samaritan, the Mercy that struck him participates in the fullness of God, therefore, no dam can hold it back.
Be Bishops with a heart wounded by this mercy and therefore tireless in the humble task of accompanying the man that “perchance” God has put on your way. Wherever you go, remember that the road to Jericho is not far. Your Churches are full of such roads. Very close to you it will not be difficult to find one who waits not for a “Levite” who turns his face, but a brother who comes close.
First of all accompany your clergy with solicitous patience; be close to your clergy. I beg you to take to your priests the Pope’s embrace and appreciation for their active generosity. Try to revive in them the awareness that Christ is their “destiny,” their part and source of inheritance,” the part that is for them to drink in the “chalice” (cf. Psalm16:5). Who else can fill the heart of a servant of God and of His Church outside of Christ? I also beg you to act with great prudence and responsibility in receiving candidates or incardinating priests in your local Churches. Please, <exercise> prudence and responsibility in this. Remember that wanted from the beginning was the inseparable relation between a local Church and its priests and a wandering or in transit clergy was never accepted from one post to another. And this is a sickness of our times.
Keep a special accompaniment for all families, rejoicing with their generous love and encouraging the immense good that they lavish on this world. Above all, follow the most wounded. Do not “pass by” in face of their frailties. Stop to let you heart of Pastors be pierced by the vision of their wound; approach them with delicacy and without fear. Put before their eyes the joy of genuine love and the grace with which God raises it to participation in His own Love. So many are in need of rediscovering it, others have never known it, some hope to rescue it, not a few will have to bear the weight of having lost it irremediably. I beg you to accompany them in discernment and with empathy.
Dear Brothers, now we will pray together and I will bless you with all my heart of Pastor, of Father, of Brother. The blessing is always the invocation of God’s face on us. Christ is the face of God, which is never darkened. In blessing you, I will ask Him to walk with you and give you the courage to walk with Him. It is His face that attracts us, is imprinted in us and accompanies us. So be it!
[Original text: Italian] [Translation by ZENIT]
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FOCUS Expands to 12 New Campuses, Including Brown University and University of Oregon by ZENIT Staff

For the 2016 – 2017 academic year, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) has added 12 new domestic campuses, including Brown University, the University of Oregon and the University of Mississippi. More than 550 missionaries are serving on a total of 125 campuses, which include two universities in Austria.
These missionaries are hosting Bible studies and outreach events and sharing the joy of Christ through one-on-one discipleship. FOCUS missionaries are typically recent college graduates who devote two or more years of their post-collegiate lives to reach out to peers on campus.
“I’m most looking forward to having a systematic approach to making connections with students, many of whom may otherwise never meet us,” said Father Nick Blaha, chaplain at one of FOCUS’ new campuses: Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas. Fr. Blaha served as a FOCUS missionary from 2003 – 2006, and he has brought several students to FOCUS national conferences in the past. “Having someone to model what I’ve been describing will be so motivating to our students and help grow our local community. People will see the changes.”
Trained in Church teaching, prayer, sacred Scripture, evangelization and discipleship, FOCUS missionaries encounter students in friendship where they are, inviting them into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and accompanying them as they pursue lives of virtue and excellence.
Fr. Blaha added, “I wouldn’t have entered the seminary if it weren’t for FOCUS. Being a missionary is like a trial-run of trust in God. Through poverty, chastity and obedience, I experienced His trustworthiness. I also saw the work of the Holy Spirit firsthand while serving on campus. FOCUS was much smaller when I was a missionary. It’s inspiring to see the cumulative efforts over the years.”
Through the apostolate’s first international expansion, eight FOCUS missionaries — two teams of four each — are serving alongside Austrian missionaries at the University of Graz (Austria) and the University of Vienna (Austria). FOCUS works closely with the Catholic dioceses, bishops and campus chaplains to build a foundation for FOCUS to enter onto new campuses. FOCUS’ collaboration with chaplains and campus ministries at the Austrian universities is part of a two-year pilot program.
The following are the new FOCUS campuses:
U.S.

• Boise State University — Boise, Idaho
• Brown University — Providence, R.I.
• Emporia State University — Emporia, Kan.
• Idaho State University — Pocatello, Idaho
• McNeese State University — Lake Charles, La.
• Northwestern State Louisiana — Natchitoches, La.
• University of Mississippi — Oxford, Miss.
• University of Idaho — Moscow, Idaho
• University of Oregon — Eugene, Ore.
• University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh — Oshkosh, Wis.
• Washington State University — Pullman, Wash.
• Wichita State University — Wichita, Kan.

Austria

• University of Graz
• University of Vienna

About FOCUS
FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) was founded in 1998, inviting college students into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church, inspiring and equipping them for a lifetime of Christ-centered evangelization, discipleship and friendships in which they lead others to do the same. During the 2016 – 2017 academic year, more than 550 missionaries are serving full-time on 125 college campuses, located across 38 U.S. states and in two pilot locations in Austria. More than 20,000 FOCUS alumni have been prepared to evangelize parishes throughout the U.S. Within this number, more than 600 have made decisions to pursue Catholic religious vocations. By 2022, FOCUS expects to launch 75,000 alumni into America’s 17,000+ Catholic parishes. FOCUS missionaries are typically recent college graduates who devote two or more years of their post-collegiate lives to reach out to peers on campus. To learn more, visit us at www.focus.org.
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US Bishops Welcome Pope’s Plan for ‘World Day of Prayer for Victims of Sexual Abuse’ by ZENIT Staff

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, welcomed Pope Francis’ call for a World Day of Prayer for Victims of Sexual Abuse and highlighted the efforts in dioceses across the country guided by the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
Related: Read what the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has achieved and is planning
The archbishop’s statement follows.
With a pastor’s heart, Pope Francis renewed the call of the universal Church to pray for, help heal and proactively protect children from the terrible sin of sexual abuse. For whenever we have failed to protect our children from predators, we beg God’s forgiveness. For wherever we have failed to support victims of sexual abuse, we beg their forgiveness. We have learned from the pain of such moments to motivate a rigorous prevention program.
That is why, in the United States, dioceses and parishes across the country have found grace in the very types of reconciliation services proposed by the worldwide day of prayer. Likewise, our painful experience resulted in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. We are grateful to the Holy Father for calling for the day of prayer. This universal expression of healing and sorrow, joined by our brothers and sisters around the world, will be a powerful reminder that no survivor should walk the path toward healing alone.
Earlier this week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Administrative Committee met to begin preparing our support for the Holy Father’s effort. It is a moment to renew our commitment and ensure we remain vigilant against the scourge of sexual abuse. Let us pray that we may never become complacent in our prayer and protection. If you have been the victim of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, notify law enforcement and please know there is a victim assistance coordinator in every U.S. diocese ready to help. They are trained and ready to receive your call.
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Church’s Teaching on Marriage Comes From Author of Creation, Say Bishops by ZENIT Staff

Two USCCB committee chairmen have issued a joint statement reaffirming the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage “as exclusively the permanent, faithful, and fruitful union of one man and one woman [and] cannot change.”
The reiteration of Church teaching was made this week after Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, said at a Human Rights Campaign event that he expects the Church’s stance on “same-sex marriage” will eventually change. Kaine’s bishop, Francis X. DiLorenzo of Richmond, Virginia, responded with a statement earlier in the week.
Then the US bishops also issued a statement.
Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, New York, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, issued the following statement:
God’s Plan Doesn’t Change
Joint Statement from Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and Bishop Richard Malone, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth
As pastors of the Church it is timely to reaffirm the Church’s authoritative teaching about marriage as it comes to us from God as the author of creation and of revelation. The Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage as exclusively the permanent, faithful, and fruitful union of one man and one woman cannot change.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, hearkening back to the timeless words of the Book of Genesis: “‘The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws…. God himself is the author of marriage.’ The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator” (CCC, no. 1603). And despite so many various cultural changes and understandings, this “order of creation persists…” (no. 1608).
This teaching was repeated by the Holy Father in his Encyclical “On the Care for Our Common Home” (Laudato Si’), where Pope Francis encourages all of us to work together on respecting the gift of nature, the gift of God’s creation. In particular, Pope Francis calls attention to “the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature…” (LS, no. 155). We cause great harm to ourselves, to each other, and to the world when we ignore the moral law given to us by God and inscribed in our very nature. The goodness and beautiful diversity of God’s creation does not include those things that are consequences of our sins.
The attempt to redefine the essential meaning of marriage is acting against the Creator. It cannot be morally justified, “for he commanded and they were created; and he established them for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds and he set a law which cannot pass away” (Ps 148:5b-6). Therefore, as a community and a nation, we cannot make progress in human development if we “think that the weakening of the family as that natural society founded on marriage will prove beneficial to society as a whole” (Amoris Laetitia, no. 52).
May all of us work together for the common good, which includes the responsibility to protect, preserve, and strengthen marriage.
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Catholics Must Overcome Partisan Divide on Immigration, Say US Bishops by ZENIT Staff

Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, auxiliary bishop of Seattle and Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Migration, issued the following statement this week:
On September 19, the United Nations General Assembly is calling together for the first time a summit level meeting of Heads of State and government officials to discuss the large movement of refugees and migrants in the world today. The event will highlight the need for shared responsibility by the international community to address migration related crises around the world. This provides an opportunity for the bishops to bring attention to their long-standing teachings on migration, which are rooted in the Gospel message of welcome and grounded in Catholic social teaching.
Standing before the United States Congress, Pope Francis called on all Americans to “seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities.”
His words are prescient to our situation today, in which we find ourselves immersed in an environment that lays bare divisions and disagreements that undermine solidarity and authentic community. As Catholics, we are called to overcome the partisan divides that separate us and instead focus on the moral teachings of the Church that will help us build a vibrant public square.
The Catholic bishops of the United States recognize the responsibility of nations to control their borders. Maintaining secure and reliable procedures that effectively manage the flow of people entering the United States is an important component of our immigration system. In addition, we will continue to underscore the right of people to migrate who are unable to find the means to support themselves and their families in their homeland, or who are fleeing persecution and violence. Sovereign nations should find a way to accommodate this right.
But it is not enough that we welcome the migrants into our communities. The political and religious leaders of this great nation must work with the leaders of other countries to help create the conditions so people do not feel compelled to migrate in the first place. We must promote the common good everywhere, so that people in all nations can live a life where their human dignity is protected. We must nurture a culture that prioritizes family unity and which rejects situations where families are forced apart because economic opportunities are not available where they live. We must seek a world in which everyone has access to the economic, political, and social opportunities to live in freedom and dignity, and to achieve a full life through the use of their God-given gifts.
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‘Catholics for Choice’ Draws Clarification From Bishops by Kathleen Naab

Earlier this week a nationwide ad campaign from a group calling itself “Catholics for Choice” brought a response from various US bishops.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, issued a statement alerting the public to the deceptive ad campaign, which called for taxpayer funding of abortion in the name of the Catholic faith. His statement was among various statements issued by individual bishops.
Four bishops in Texas, including Bishop Stephen Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, released a joint statement on the ads:
“Despite what is implied by its name, Catholics for Choice is not a member-oriented organization and has no affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, it is financed by grants from a few secular organizations pushing a pro-abortion agenda. It seldom ventures beyond Washington to Texas, unless it is to buy expensive, full-page ads when it serves their pro-abortion agenda,” the Texas bishops wrote.
Cardinal Dolan’s full statement follows:
A Statement from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities
An abortion advocacy organization called “Catholics for Choice” (CFC) placed deceptive full-page newspaper ads in multiple cities on September 12 calling for taxpayer funding of abortion in the name of the Catholic faith.
As the U.S. Catholic bishops have stated for many years, the use of the name ‘Catholic’ as a platform to promote the taking of innocent human life is offensive not only to Catholics, but to all who expect honesty and forthrightness in public discourse.
CFC is not affiliated with the Catholic Church in any way. It has no membership, and clearly does not speak for the faithful. It is funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control.
The organization rejects and distorts Catholic social teaching — and actually attacks its foundation. As Pope Francis said this summer to leaders in Poland,. . . “Life must always be welcomed and protected…from conception to natural death. All of us are called to respect life and care for it.”
CFC’s extreme ads promote abortion as if it were a social good. But abortion kills the most defenseless among us, harms women, and tears at the heart of families. Pushing for public funding would force all taxpaying Americans to be complicit in the violence of abortion and an industry that puts profit above the well-being of women and children.
According to a July 2016 poll. . . conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, 62 percent of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, including 45 percent of those who say they are pro-choice.
Finally, the CFC pits the needs of pregnant women against those of their unborn children. This is a false choice. Catholics and all people of good will are called to love them both. Consider supporting local pregnancy help centers, which do incredible work caring for mothers and children alike in a manner consistent with true social justice and mercy.
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The Cleverness of the Faithful by Archbishop Francesco Follo

Roman Rite
Am 8.4 – 7; Ps 112; 1 Tim 2.1 – 8; Lk 16.1 – 13
Ambrosian Rite
Is 43, 24c-44.3; Ps 32; Heb 11.39 to 12.4; Jn 5.25 to 36
Third Sunday after the martyrdom of St. John the Precursor
1) Praise of intelligence.
Last Sunday, the lectures chosen from the Gospel of St. Luke made us think on the dangers of an egoistic attachment to money, material goods, and everything that prevents us from living to the full our vocation to love God and our brothers. Today also through a parable a bit ‘amazing’ because it tells of a dishonest administrator who is praised (see Lk 16.1 to 13), St. Luke offers to his disciples and to us, a serious and useful teaching about the proper administration of the world’s goods and the management of life in a filial relationship with God.
In the clever administrator we can recognize our history. Every disciple, namely each of us, is a steward of the Lord to whom He entrusts the earth and its assets, first of all the brothers in humanity.
The word “administrator” occurs seven times in the parable and therefore should be taken seriously. The Greek text uses “Economos”(echoed by oikos: home and nomos: law), which in English can be translated as “the one who gives the law of the house.”
It is natural to ask ourselves the following questions: “What law we offer to our home, to our existence, to the house of God, the holy temple of God’s presence?”; “What is the law that regulates our thoughts, our choices, our actions and relationships?”; “Is the Lord Jesus, the end and the aim of it (see Rom 10: 4), our law?”; “Do we agree, in our hearts, to the law of God (see Rom 7: 22), that is, do we live deeply or superficially, casually, without love, without the purity of a heart that lets be reached by its Lord?” ; “Is the house we are called to administer based on the law that finds its full fulfillment in the love for our brothers (see Romans 13: 8,10) whom we must accept as they are and with whom we must share their burdens, hardships, pains and poverty (see Gal 6: 2)? “.
The answer to these questions is a yes determined, clever and even smart, if we want to take into account today’s parable.
In fact, the Messiah presents this “steward” not as a model to follow in his dishonesty, but as an example to be imitated for his farsighted guile. Jesus wants his disciples to have the same determination of this administrator. He was smart preserving himself; may the disciple be as smart in “managing” his life and his dwelling dedicating himself to the Kingdom. Of course the administrator and the disciple belong to two different logics, the first to the logic of the world and the second to the logic of the Kingdom.
The dishonest and shrewd administrator says to himself: “What shall I do now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg” (Lk 16, 3). And immediately he finds a smart and dishonest solution to survive.
The honest but smart or, with a more positive adjective, intelligent disciple not only seeks to administer ethically the goods entrusted to him, but hastens to do what the other administrator says that he does not want to do, ” to dig” (it is the literal meaning of the Greek word which was translated as to hoe) nor ” to beg” because he does not have the strength or is ashamed.
Let’s welcome the invitation of the book of Proverbs to search for wisdom as we would do for the most precious treasures (Pr 2, 4). Digging with hands, heart and mind. Digging deeper, every day, forever and until the end of life, to seek the Lord, his face, and his word.
To dig the depths of the earth and of the human mind and heart to seek God is a job necessary to live as men.
We must fortify our weak hands by putting them together in prayer. We must make firm our feeble knees and start working for the Gospel, sweating and working hard to seek the Lord, our real treasure, in order to “administer” it in communion and sharing.
2) To beg
We should ask for the force to dig, then the search becomes begging. The search for God, the request for Him and to see His face, is not just an adherence to a set of dogmas that would quench the thirst for God present in man, beggar for the Infinite and for words of eternal life .
Commenting on Psalm 104, which invites us to “always seek the face of God”, Saint Augustine writes that this invitation is valid not only for this life but for eternity. The discovery of “God’s face” is never exhausted. The more we enter into the splendor of divine love, the more beautiful is to go forward in the search, so that “to the extent that love grows , grows the search for the One who has been found” (En. In Ps. 104.3: CCL 40, 1537).
We are not beings for death (see Heidegger, Being and Time), but for life and we beg to live eternally. The beggar of God seeks the Bread of life and the power given by this bread let him begin and persevere on the path to life.
Certainly, if we look only to the appearances, the immediate evidence is that life seems like a long journey towards death that has, as a tomb, a monument which, when it is artistically beautiful, is the glorification of death.
If, as suggested by Pope Francis, we look to life with three anxieties, that of the mind, that of the encounter with God and that of love, we will be pilgrims towards life. In begging let us be pilgrims, going from death to life.
The important thing is to continue to beg, not to close on ourselves. The essential is to continue to seek the truth, the ultimate and definitive meaning of life, never ceasing to seek the face of God.
This anxiety of the mind is the restless desire to seek a personal encounter with God. In fact, the restlessness to know the truth and the meaning of life, is not to have some good thoughts in mind but to meet God, the meaning of life that in Christ reveals the good and merciful face of fate. In this encounter with the One who is the Word of Life and says words of eternal life, we experience the God who is near. We are led to understand that the God we seek outside ourselves and away from us, is the God who is near every human being, the God close to our heart, more intimate to us than ourselves (see Saint Augustine, Confessions, III, 6:11). However, we must not stop knowing and meeting God. The restless journey continues. The path leads to the third uneasiness: that of love.
What is the unrest of love? “It is always seeking, relentlessly, the good for the other, the beloved, with an intensity which leads to tears. I can think of Jesus who weeps at the grave of his friend Lazarus, of Peter who, after he denied Jesus, meets the rich look of mercy and love and cries bitterly, of the Father who awaits the return of the child on the terrace, and, when he is still far away, runs to meet him; I am reminded of the Virgin Mary who lovingly follows her Son Jesus to the Cross. “(Pope Francis, Homily August 28, 2013).
3) Anxiety and virginity.
In virginity the uneasiness of love becomes begging, which places the human being in steady and constant search for Christ. In fact, “virginity is not lack of desire, but intensity of desire” (Saint Teresa of Avila). Virginity has not entered the world as a philosophy, it came as a gift of God who calls us to a communion solid, deep and exclusive with Christ. The fact that virginity is exclusive does not imply that it is exclusionary, because in the love for God there is the love for the neighbor.
Pushed by unconditional love for Christ and humanity, especially the poor and the suffering, the consecrated Virgins live as “beggars of Heaven” (Jacques Maritain) and “play in their daily lives the earthly life of Jesus, chaste, poor and obedient “(Pope Francis, Ap. Cons. Vultum Dei querere, 5; see. St. John Paul II, Vita consecrata, n. 14).
It’s true that being in love with God and the neighbor concerns all believers, as St. Augustine wrote: “The beautiful garden of the Lord, brethren, has not only the roses of martyrs, but also the lilies of virgins, the ivy of those who live in marriage, the violets of widows. No group of people should doubt his call: Christ died for all “(Speeches, 304.3).
It is equally true that the consecrated Virgins in the world, living in poor, obedient and chaste detachment from self, from everyone and everything, testify in a higher and radical way that the One who alone can and is missing to the human heart, is the Son of God made flesh, present in the world. Virginity in the world is, in fact, the supreme witness that everything is in function of Christ, and shows to those who work and to those who marry that everything is for Christ.
The consecrated Virgins testify that even in the world we can give priority to God and that only when He is at the center of the everyday thoughts and work, personal life and society with its dynamism can find their proper orientation and full meaning. However, where God does not occupy the first place, where God is not recognized and worshiped as the Supreme Good, there the human dignity is in jeopardy. In a world where selfishness and the pursuit of pleasure dictate the law, the consecrated Virgins are the guardians of purity, unselfishness, compassion and true human dignity.
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Patristic Reading
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430)
On the words of the gospel, Lc 16,9 “Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness,”
Our duty is to give to others the admonitions we have received ourselves. The recent lesson of the Gospel has admonished us to make friends of the mammon of iniquity, that they too may” receive “those who do so” into everlasting habitations.” But who are they that shall have everlasting habitations, but the hints of God? And who are they who are to be received by them into everlasting habitations, but they who serve their need, and minister cheerfully to their necessities? Accordingly let us remember, that in the last judgment the Lord will say to thosewho shall stand on His right hand, “I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat;” and the rest which ye know. And upon their enquiring when they had afforded these good offices to Him, He answered, “When ye did it to one of the least of Mine, ye did it unto Me.”1 These least are they who receive into everlasting habitations. This He said to them on the right hand, because they did so: and the contrary He said to them on the left, because they would not. But what have they on the right hand who did so, received, or rather, what are they to receive? “Come,” says He, “ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat. When ye did it to one of the least of Mine, ye did it unto Me.”2 Who then are these least ones of Christ? They are those who have left all they had, and followed Him, and have distributed whatever they had to the poor; that unencumbered and without any worldly fetter they might serve God, and might lift their shoulders free from the burdens of the world, and winged as it were aloft. These are the least. And why the least? Because lowly, because not puffed up, not proud. Yet weigh them in the scales, these least ones, and thou wilt find them a heavy weight.
But what means it, that He says they are “friends of the mammon of iniquity “? What is “the mammon of iniquity “? First, what is “mammon “? For it is not a Latin word. It is a Hebrew word, and cognate to the Punic language. For these languages are allied to one another by a kind of nearness of signification.What the Punics call mammon, is called in Latin, “lucre “3 What the Hebrews call mammon, is called in Latin, “riches.” That we may express the whole then in Latin, our Lord Jesus Christ says this, “Make to yourselves friends of the riches of iniquity.” Some, by a bad understanding of this, plunder the goods of others, and bestow some of that upon the poor, and so think that they do what is enjoined them. For they say, “To plunder the goods of others, is the mammon of iniquity; to spend some of it, especially on the poor saints, this is to make friends with the mammon of iniquity. This understanding of it must be corrected, yea, must be utterly effaced from the tablets of your heart. I would not that ye should so understand it. Give alms of your righteous labours: give out of that which ye possess rightfully. For ye cannot corrupt Christ your Judge, that He should not hear you together with the poor, from whom ye take away. For if thou wert to despoil any one who was weak, thyself being stronger and of greater power, and he were to come with thee to the judge, any man you please on this earth, who had any power of judging, and he were to wish to plead his cause with thee; if thou wert to give anything of the spoil and plunder of that poor man to the judge, that he might pronounce judgment in thy favour; would that judge please even thee? True, he has pronounced judgment in thy favour, and yet so great is the force of justice, that he would displease even thee. Do not then represent God to thyself as such an one as this. Do not set up such an idol in the temple of thine heart. Thy God is not such as thou oughtest not to be thyself. If thou wouldest not judge so, but wouldest judge justly; even so thy God is better than thou: He is not inferior to thee: He is more just, He is the fountain of justice. Whatsoever good thou hast done, thou hast gotten from Him; and whatsoever good thou hast given vent to,4 thou hast drunk in from Him. Dost thou praise the vessel, because it hath something from Him, and blame the fountain? Do not give alms out of usury and increase. I am speaking to the faithful, am speaking to those to whom we distribute the body of Christ. Be in fear and amend yourselves: that I may not have hereafter to say, Thou doest so, and thou too doest so. Yet I trow, that if I should do so, ye ought not to be angry with me, but with yourselves, that ye may amend yourselves. For this is the meaning of the expression in the Psalm, “Be ye angry, and sin not.”5 I would have you be angry, but only that ye may not sin. Now in order that ye may not sin, with whom ought ye to be angry but with yourselves? For what is a penitent man, but a man who is angry with himself? That he may obtain pardon, he exacts punishment from himself; and so with good right says to God, “Turn Thine eyes from my sins, for I acknowledge my sin.”6 If thou acknowledgest it, then He will pardon it. Ye then who have done so wrongly, do so no more: it is not lawful.
But if ye have done so already, and have such money in your possession, and have filled your coffers thereby, and were heaping up treasure by these means: what ye have comes of evil, now then add not evil to it, and make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity. Had Zacchaeus what he had from good sources?7 Read and see. He was the chief of the publicans, that is, he was one to whom the public taxes were paid in: by this he had his wealth. He had oppressed many, had taken from many, and so had heaped much together. Christ entered into his house, and salvation came upon his house; for so said the Lord Himself, “This day is salvation come to this house.”8 Now mark the method of this salvation. First he was longing to see the Lord, because he was little in stature: but when the crowd hindered him, he got up into a sycamore tree, and saw Him as He passed by. But Jesus saw him, and said, “Zacchaeus, come down, I must abide at thy house.” Thou art hanging there, but I will not keep thee in suspense. I will not, that is, put thee off. Thou didst wish to see Me as I passed by, to-day shalt thou find Me dwelling at thy house. So the Lord went in unto him, and he, filled with joy, said, “The half of my goods I give to the poor.” Lo, how swiftly he runs, who runs to make friends of the mammon of iniquity. And lest he should be held guilty on any other account, he said, “If I have taken anything from any man, I” will “restore fourfold.” He inflicted sentence of condemnation on himself, that he might not incur damnation. So then, ye who have anything from evil sources, do good therewith. Ye who have not, wish not to acquire by evil means. Be thou good thyself, who doest good with what is evilly acquired: and when with this evil thou beginnest to do any good, do not remain evil thyself. Thy money is being converted to good, and dost thou thyself continue evil?
There is indeed another way of understanding it; and I will not withhold it too. The mammon of iniquity is all the riches of this world, from whatever source they come. For howsoever they be heaped together, they are the mammon of iniquity, that is, the riches of iniquity. What is, “they are the riches of iniquity “? It is money which iniquity calls by the name of riches. For if we seek for the true riches, they are different from these. In these Job abounded,naked as he was, when he had a heart full to Godward, and poured out praises like most costly gems to his God, when he had lost all he had.9 And from what treasure did he this, if he had nothing? These then are the true riches. But the other sort are called riches by iniquity. Thou dost possess these riches. I blame it not: an inheritance has come to thee, thy father was rich, and he left it to thee. Or thou hast honestly acquired them: thou hast a house full of the fruit of just labour; I blame it not. Yet even thus do not call them riches. For if thou dost call them riches, thou wilt love them: and if thou love them, thou wilt perish with them. Lose, that thou be not lost: give, that thou mayest gain: sow, that thou mayest reap. Call not these riches, for “the true” they are not. They are full of poverty, and liable ever to accidents. What sort of riches are those, for whose sake thou art afraid of the robber, for whose sake thou art afraid of thine own servant, lest he should kill thee, and take them away, and fly? If they were true riches, they would give thee security.
So then those are the true riches, which when we have them, we cannot lose. And lest haply thou shouldest fear a thief because of them, they will be there where none can take them away. Hear thy Lord, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where no thief approacheth.”10 Then will they be riches, when thou hast removed them hence. As long as they are in the earth, they are not riches. But the world calls them riches, iniquity calls them so. God calls them therefore the mammon of iniquity, because iniquity calls them riches. Hear the Psalm, “O Lord, deliver me out of the hand of strange children, whose mouth hath spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. Whose sons are as new plants, firmly rooted from their youth. Their daughters decked out, adorned round about after the similitude of a temple. Their storehouses full, flowing out from this into that. Their oxen fat, their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings forth. There is no breach of wall, nor going forth, no crying out in their streets.”11 Lo, what sort of happiness the Psalmist has described: but hear what is the case with them whom he has set forth as children of iniquity. “Whose mouth hath spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” Thus has he set them forth, and said that their happiness is only upon the earth. And what did he add? “They are happy the people that hath these things.” But who caller them so? “Strange children,” aliens from the race, and belonging not to the seed of Abraham: they “called the people happy that hath these things.” Who called them so? “They whose mouth hath spoken vanity.” It is a vain thing then to call them happy who have these things. And yet they are called so by them, “whose mouth hath spoken vanity.” By them the “mammon of iniquity” of the Gospel is called riches.
But what sayest thou? Seeing that these “strange children” that they “whose mouth hath spoken vanity,” have “called the people happy that hath these things,” what sayest thou? These are false riches, show me the true. Thou findest fault with these, show me what thou praisest. Thou wishest me to despise these, show me what to prefer. Let the Psalmist speak himself. For he who said, “they called the people happy that hath these things,” gives us such an answer, as if we had said to him, that is, to the Psalmist12 himself, “Lo, this thou hast taken away from us, and nothing hast thou given us: lo, these, lo, these we despise; whereby shall we live, whereby shall we be happy? For they who have spoken, they will undertake to answer13 for themselves. For they have ‘called’ men ‘who have’ riches ‘happy.’ But what sayest thou?” As if he had been thus questioned, he makes answer and says, They call the rich happy: but I say, “Happy are the people whose is the Lord their God.” Thus then thou hast heard of the true riches, make friends of the mammon of iniquity, and thou shalt be “a happy people, whose is the Lord their God.” At times we go along the way, and see very pleasant and productive estates, and we say, “Whose estate is that?” We are told, “such a man’s;” and we say, “Happy man!”We “speak vanity.” Happy he whose is that house, happy he whose that estate, happy he whose that flock, happy he whose that servant, happy he whose is that household. Take away vanity if Thou wouldest hear the truth. “Happy he whose is the Lord” his “God.” For not he who has that estate is happy: but he whose is that “God.” But in order to declare most plainly the happiness of possessions, thou sayest that thy estate has made thee happy. And why? Because thou livest by it. For when, thou dost highly praise thine estate, thou sayest thus,” It finds me food, I live by it.” Consider whereby thou dost really live. He by whom thou livest, is He to whom thou sayest, “With Thee is the fountain of life.”14 “Happy is the people: whose God is the Lord.” O Lord my God, O Lord our God, make us happy by Thee, that we may come unto Thee. We wish not to be happy from gold, or silver, or land, from these earthly, and most vain, and transitory goods of this perishable life. Let not “our mouth speak; vanity.” Make us happy by Thee, seeing that we shall never lose Thee. When we shall once have gotten Thee, we shall neither lose Thee, nor be lost ourselves. Make us happy by Thee, because “Happy is the people whose is the Lord their God.” Nor will God be angry if we shall say of Him, He is our estate. For we read that “the Lord is the portion of my inheritance.”15 Grand thing, Brethren, we are both His inheritance, and He is ours, seeing that we both cultivate His service16 and He cultivateth us.17 It is no derogation18 to His honour that He cultivateth us. Because if we cultivate Him as our God, He cultivateth us as His field. And, (that ye may know that He doth cultivate us) hear Him whom He hath sent to us: “I,” saith He, “am the vine, ye are the branches, My Father is the Husbandman.”19 Therefore He doth cultivate us. But if we yield fruit, He prepares for us His garner. But if under the attention of so great a hand we will be barren, and for good fruit20 bring forth thorns, I am loth to say what follows.21 Let us make an end with a theme of joy. “Let us turn then to the Lord,” etc.
1 (Mt 25,35 etc.
2 (Mt 25,40
3 Lucrum.
4 Eructuasti.
5 (Ps 4,4 Sept.
6 (Ps 51,9
7 (Lc 19,2 etc).
8 (Lc 19,9
9 (Jb 1,21
10 (Mt 6,20 Lc 12,33
11 (Ps 144,11 etc.), Sept).
12 Psalmo.
13 Recipient.
14 (Ps 36,9
15 (Ps 16,5
16 Colimus.
17 Colit. Quia et colimus eum, et colit nos. Vide Serm. xlvii., xxix., xxvii., ii.; Conf. B. 13,1.
18 Injuria.
19 (Jn 15,1
20 Frumento.
21 See Jn 15,2 Jn 15,6.
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Pope’s Telegram for Death of Former President of Italian Republic by ZENIT Staff

Below is a ZENIT translation of the telegram of condolences Pope Francis sent upon learning of the death of Senator Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Former President of the Italian Republic:
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DEAR SIGNORA FRANCA PILLA CIAMPI
C/O SENATE – GIUSTINIANI PALACE
VIA DELLA DOGANA VECCHIA 29
00186 ROMA
I wish to offer my heartfelt condolences to you, your children and to all the family at this time of grief for the death of Senator Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, President Emeritus of the Italian Republic, who held public responsibility with great discretion and a strong sense of the State. Remembering the sincere friendship linking this distinguished man of institutions with St. Pope John Paul II, I earnestly offer prayers to the Lord for eternal peace of his soul. With these sentiments, I impart on you and loved ones the Apostolic Blessing
FRANCISCUS PP
[Original text: Italian] [Translation by Deborah Castellano Lubov]
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