Pope at Mass prays for families
At Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Friday, Pope Francis
prays for families and reflects on the danger of rigidity.
By Fr. Benedict Mayaki, SJ
At the start of Mass on Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter,
Pope Francis turned his thoughts towards families.
“Today is the International Day of Families. Let us pray for
families, that the Spirit of the Lord - the spirit of love, respect and freedom
- may grow in families,” he said.
The early days of the Church
In his homily, Pope Francis remarked that, in the first
reading (Acts 15: 22-31), the early days of the Church were filled with a
mixture of peace, persecution and turmoil.
In times of peace, the Church grew and the word of God
spread, he said. There were also persecutions beginning with Stephen and then
Paul, who changed from being a persecutor to being persecuted. The primitive
Church also had some turmoil like the situation in the first reading.
The newly converted Christians in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia
had believed in Jesus, been baptized and received the Holy Spirit without an
intermediary stage. However, there were some who felt that pagan converts first
had to be initiated as Jews before becoming Christians, called judaizers. This
disturbed the pagan converts and made them question their status. They felt
they were second-class Christians.
For this reason, the Apostles wrote to the Church in
Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. They acknowledged that some of their number had
upset them with their teaching and disturbed their peace of mind without any
mandate from the Apostles.
The danger of rigidity
Pope Francis reflected on the attitude of those early
Christian preachers.
“Rigidity is not from the Spirit of God, it puts into
question the gratuitousness of redemption and the resurrection of Christ,” said
the Pope.
Pope Francis noted that the judaizers were people who had
theological, pastoral and moral arguments for their rigidity. They wanted a
religion of prescriptions and took away the freedom of the Holy Spirit and the
joy of the Gospel.
Jesus, said the Pope, also had to confront the teachers of
the law for their rigidity. He said “woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you
traverse sea and land to make one convert, and when that happens you make him a
child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves (Mt 23:15). The doctors of the law
manipulated the consciences of the people making them rigid.
Pope Francis gave the example of pelagians who were
notoriously rigid. He also gave more recent examples of apostolic organizations
that seem to work well from the outside but were later found out to be corrupt.
He notes that rigidity stops us from enjoying the freedom
that comes from justification. We can only enjoy the grace of freedom when we
are not rigid.
“Justification is gratuitous. The death of Jesus is
gratuitous, you do not pay for it. It is free!” said the Pope.
The joy of evangelical freedom
Pope Francis pointed out that the disciples solved the
problem of rigidity by writing to the converts in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia.
They said, “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place
on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat
sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and
from unlawful marriage.”
These, notes the Pope, were common sense morals. They helped
the new converts not to confuse Christianity with paganism. When these
Christians who had been disturbed received the letter, they were delighted with
the encouragement it gave them. Their turmoil turned to joy.
The Pope remarks that “the spirit of evangelical freedom always
brings joy”. This is what Jesus brought with his resurrection. It is not rigid
but rather gratuitous. The disciples experienced this joy with Jesus when he
said to them: “I no longer call you slaves… I call you friends” (Jn 15:15).
Concluding his homily, the Pope prayed that the Lord might
help us to discern the fruits of evangelical gratuitousness from the fruits of
rigidity.
“May the Lord free us from the spirit of rigidity that robs
us of freedom.”
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