Pope's Message for World Day of
Social Communication: Full Text
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| International Book Day in Pomplona (ANSA) |
Pope Francis releases his annual message for the Word Day of
Social Communication, a reflection on the Biblical text Exodus 10:2: "That
you may tell your children and grandchildren".
“That you may tell your children and grandchildren”
(Ex 10:2)
Life becomes history
I would like to devote this year’s Message to the theme of
storytelling, because I believe that, so as not to lose our bearings, we need
to make our own the truth contained in good stories. Stories that build
up, not tear down; stories that help us rediscover our roots and the strength
needed to move forward together. Amid the cacophony of voices and
messages that surround us, we need a human story that can speak of ourselves
and of the beauty all around us. A narrative that can regard our world
and its happenings with a tender gaze. A narrative that can tell us that
we are part of a living and interconnected tapestry. A narrative that can
reveal the interweaving of the threads which connect us to one another.
1. Weaving stories
Human beings are storytellers. From childhood we
hunger for stories just as we hunger for food. Stories influence our
lives, whether in the form of fairy tales, novels, films, songs, news, even if
we do not always realize it. Often we decide what is right or wrong based
on characters and stories we have made our own. Stories leave their mark
on us; they shape our convictions and our behaviour. They can help us
understand and communicate who we are.
We are not just the only beings who need clothing to cover
our vulnerability (cf. Gen 3: 21); we are also the only ones
who need to be “clothed” with stories to protect our lives. We weave not
only clothing, but also stories: indeed, the human capacity to “weave”
(Latin texere) gives us not only the word textile but
also text. The stories of different ages all have a common
“loom”: the thread of their narrative involves “heroes”, including everyday
heroes, who in following a dream confront difficult situations and combat evil,
driven by a force that makes them courageous, the force of love. By
immersing ourselves in stories, we can find reasons to heroically face the
challenges of life.
Human beings are storytellers because we are engaged in a
process of constant growth, discovering ourselves and becoming enriched in the
tapestry of the days of our life. Yet since the very beginning, our story
has been threatened: evil snakes its way through history.
2. Not all stories are good stories
“When you eat of it … you will be like God” (cf. Gen 3:4):
the temptation of the serpent introduces into the fabric of history a knot
difficult to undo. “If you possess, you will become, you will
achieve…” This is the message whispered by those who even today use
storytelling for purposes of exploitation. How many stories serve to lull
us, convincing us that to be happy we continually need to gain, possess and
consume. We may not even realize how greedy we have become for chatter
and gossip, or how much violence and falsehood we are consuming. Often on
communication platforms, instead of constructive stories which serve to
strengthen social ties and the cultural fabric, we find destructive and
provocative stories that wear down and break the fragile threads binding us
together as a society. By patching together bits of unverified
information, repeating banal and deceptively persuasive arguments, sending
strident and hateful messages, we do not help to weave human history, but
instead strip others of their dignity.
But whereas the stories employed for exploitation and power
have a short lifespan, a good story can transcend the confines of space and
time. Centuries later, it remains timely, for it nourishes life.
In an age when falsification is increasingly sophisticated,
reaching exponential levels (as in deepfake), we need wisdom to be
able to welcome and create beautiful, true and good stories. We need
courage to reject false and evil stories. We need patience and
discernment to rediscover stories that help us not to lose the thread amid
today’s many troubles. We need stories that reveal who we truly are, also
in the untold heroism of everyday life.
3. The Story of stories
Sacred Scripture is a Story of stories.
How many events, peoples and individuals it sets before us! It
shows us from the very beginning a God who is both creator and narrator.
Indeed, God speaks his word and things come into existence (cf. Gen 1).
As narrator, God calls things into life, culminating in the creation of
man and woman as his free dialogue partners, who make history alongside him.
In one of the Psalms, the creature tells the creator: “For you formed my
inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made … My frame
was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in
the depths of the earth” (139:13-15). We are not born complete, but need
to be constantly “woven”, “knitted together”. Life is given to us as an
invitation to continue to weave the “wonderful” mystery that we are.
The Bible is thus the great love story between God and
humanity. At its centre stands Jesus, whose own story brings to
fulfilment both God’s love for us and our love for God. Henceforth, in
every generation, men and women are called to recount and commit to
memory the most significant episodes of this Story of stories,
those that best communicate its meaning.
The title of this year’s Message is drawn from the Book of
Exodus, a primordial biblical story in which God intervenes in the history of
his people. When the enslaved children of Israel cry out to Him, God
listens and remembers: “God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac
and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel – and God knew” (Ex 2:
24-25). God’s memory brings liberation from oppression through a series
of signs and wonders. The Lord then reveals to Moses the meaning of all
these signs: “that you may tell in the hearing of your children and
grandchildren… what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am
the Lord” (Ex 10:2). The Exodus experience teaches us that
knowledge of the Lord is handed down from generation to generation mainly by
telling the story of how he continues to make himself present. The God of
life communicates with us through the story of life.
Jesus spoke of God not with abstract concepts, but with
parables, brief stories taken from everyday life. At this point life
becomes story and then, for the listener, story becomes life: the story becomes
part of the life of those who listen to it, and it changes them.
The Gospels are also stories, and not by chance. While
they tell us about Jesus, they are “performative”[1]; they conform us to
Jesus. The Gospel asks the reader to share in the same faith in
order to share in the same life. The Gospel of John tells us that the
quintessential storyteller – the Word – himself becomes the story: “God’s only
Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (Jn 1:
18). The original verb, exegésato, can be translated both as
“revealed” and “recounted”. God has become personally woven into our
humanity, and so has given us a new way of weaving our stories.
4. An ever renewed story
The history of Christ is not a legacy from the past; it is
our story, and always timely. It shows us that God was so deeply
concerned for mankind, for our flesh and our history, to the point that he
became man, flesh and history. It also tells us that no human stories are
insignificant or paltry. Since God became story, every human story is, in
a certain sense, a divine story. In the history of every person, the
Father sees again the story of his Son who came down to earth. Every
human story has an irrepressible dignity. Consequently, humanity deserves
stories that are worthy of it, worthy of that dizzying and fascinating height
to which Jesus elevated it.
“You” – Saint Paul wrote – “are a letter from Christ
delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God,
not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor 3:3).
The Holy Spirit, the love of God, writes within us. And as he
writes within us, he establishes goodness in us and constantly reminds us of
it. Indeed, to “re-mind” means to bring to mind, to “write” on the heart.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, every story, even the most forgotten
one, even the one that seems to be written with the most crooked lines, can
become inspired, can be reborn as a masterpiece, and become an appendix to the
Gospel. Like the Confessions of Augustine.
Like A Pilgrim’s Journey of Ignatius. Like The
Story of a Soul of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus. Like The
Betrothed, like The Brothers Karamazov. Like countless
other stories, which have admirably scripted the encounter between God’s
freedom and that of man. Each of us knows different stories that have the
fragrance of the Gospel, that have borne witness to the Love that transforms life.
These stories cry out to be shared, recounted and brought to life in every age,
in every language, in every medium.
5. A story that renews us
Our own story becomes part of every great story. As we
read the Scriptures, the stories of the saints, and also those texts that have
shed light on the human heart and its beauty, the Holy Spirit is free to write
in our hearts, reviving our memory of what we are in God’s eyes. When we
remember the love that created and saved us, when we make love a part of our
daily stories, when we weave the tapestry of our days with mercy, we are
turning another page. We no longer remain tied to regrets and sadness,
bound to an unhealthy memory that burdens our hearts; rather, by opening
ourselves to others, we open ourselves to the same vision of the great
storyteller. Telling God our story is never useless: even if the record
of events remains the same, the meaning and perspective are always changing.
To tell our story to the Lord is to enter into his gaze of compassionate
love for us and for others. We can recount to him the stories we live,
bringing to him the people and the situations that fill our lives. With
him we can re-weave the fabric of life, darning its rips and tears. How
much we, all of us, need to do exactly this!
With the gaze of the great storyteller – the only one who
has the ultimate point of view – we can then approach the other characters, our
brothers and sisters, who are with us as actors in today’s story. For no
one is an extra on the world stage, and everyone’s story is open to possible
change. Even when we tell of evil, we can learn to leave room for
redemption; in the midst of evil, we can also recognize the working of goodness
and give it space.
So it is not a matter of simply telling stories as such, or
of advertising ourselves, but rather of remembering who and what we are in
God’s eyes, bearing witness to what the Spirit writes in our hearts and
revealing to everyone that his or her story contains marvellous things.
In order to do this, let us entrust ourselves to a woman who knit
together in her womb the humanity of God and, the Gospel tells us, wove
together the events of her life. For the Virgin Mary “treasured all these
things and pondered them in her heart” (Lk 2: 19). Let us ask
for help from her, who knew how to untie the knots of life with the gentle
strength of love:
O Mary, woman and mother, you wove the divine Word in
your womb, you recounted by your life the magnificent works of God.
Listen to our stories, hold them in your heart and make your own the
stories that no one wants to hear. Teach us to recognize the good thread
that runs through history. Look at the tangled knots in our life that
paralyze our memory. By your gentle hands, every knot can be untied.
Woman of the Spirit, mother of trust, inspire us too. Help us build
stories of peace, stories that point to the future. And show us the way
to live them together.
Rome, at Saint John Lateran, 24 January 2020, the Memorial
of Saint Francis de Sales
[1] Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi,
2: “The Christian message was not only ‘informative’ but ‘performative’.
That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be
known–it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing”.
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