In his annual message to priests around the world during the traditional Chrism Mass, Francis today warned against making an idol of abstract truths.
Extolling Jesus as a “street preacher” model for priests, Francis said the closeness to people that Christ demonstrated was the “key to mercy” and also “the key to truth”.
“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths,” the Pope said.
The Truth, he said, is not only the definition of situations and things “from a certain distance, by abstract and logical reasoning”. It is also “fidelity”. “It makes you name people with their real name, as the Lord names them, before categorising them or defining ‘their situation’,” Francis said. This kind of “defining” of people before getting close to them he called “ugly”. A person was first “a child of God”, and should be seen as such first, with all their virtues and defects, before being defined with some “adjective made substance”.
The “truth idol”, Francis said, “is camouflaged. It dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart”. Even worse, he continued, “it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus”.
Being close to people, Francis said, was an essential part of the imitation of Jesus. “Proximity is more than the name of a particular virtue, it is an attitude that involves the whole person,” he insisted, implying that if parishioners begin conversations with the words, “I know, father, that you are very busy”, then this indicates a distance that is somehow an indictment of the priest.
This nearness can also be expressed by the priest in Confession, he said, making a reference to the Gospel story of the woman taken in adultery, who was about to be stoned. In Confession “closeness is decisive”, Francis said, because the truths of Jesus always approach “ face to face”. Jesus told the woman, after getting up from where he had been kneeling near her, “Neither do I condemn you”. “And it can be added,” Francis said, “‘From now on, sin no more’ not with a tone that belongs to the juridical sphere of truth-definition – the tone of who must determine [the conditions] of divine mercy – but with an expression that is said in the context of truth-faithfulness, which allows the sinner to look forward and not backward.”
“The right tone of this ‘sin no more’,” Francis said, is that of the confessor who says he is willing to repeat it 70 times seven.”
“If you feel far from God,” the Pope advised, “approach his people, who will heal you from the ideologies that have warmed your fervour. The little ones will teach you to look at Jesus in a different way. In their eyes, the person of Jesus is fascinating, his good example gives moral authority, his teachings are useful for life.”
Pic: Pope Francis during his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican (Credit Image: Evandro Inetti via ZUMA Wire/PA)
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