Pope says ‘mediocrity’ is the biggest threat young people face

• In Catholic News Agency, Vatican

• Elise Harris 

• Jun 13, 2018
  CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY

Pope Francis said Wednesday that the greatest danger modern youth face is not the array of problems that surround them, but rather, the temptation to mediocrity – preferring to stay immobile rather than making a leap toward the next step.

ROME - Pope Francis said Wednesday that the greatest danger modern youth face is not the array of problems that surround them, but rather, the temptation to mediocrity - preferring to stay immobile rather than making a leap toward the next step.
Pointing to the Gospel reading from Mark in which a rich young man kneels in front of Jesus and asks how to obtain eternal life, the pope said this question “is the challenge of every existence: the desire for a full, infinite life.”


Many young people today seek life, but end up destroying themselves by pursuing worldly desires, he said, noting that some people would say it is better “to turn this impulse off, the impulse to live, because it’s dangerous.”
However, “I would like to say, especially to young people: our worst enemy is not concrete problems, no matter how serious or dramatic: The greatest danger is a bad spirit of adaption, which is not meekness or humility, but mediocrity, timidity.”


A young person who is mediocre has no future, Francis said in off-the-cuff remarks, explaining that “they don’t grow, they won’t be successful” because they are “afraid of everything.”
“We need to ask the heavenly Father for the youth of today to receive the gift of a healthy restlessness, the ability not to be satisfied with a life without beauty, without color,” he said, adding that “if young people are not hungry for an authentic life, where will humanity end up?”
Francis spoke to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his weekly general audience, during which he began a new series of catechesis dedicated to the Ten Commandments.
The dialogue between Jesus and the rich young man in Chapter 10 of Mark’s Gospel, the pope said in his address, is “a pedagogical process” in which Jesus wants to guide the man from youth into maturity, beginning with a question about the commandments, and ending with an invitation for the man to sell his belongings.
This process of maturity, Francis said, can only take place “when one begins to accept their own limits. We become adults when we become aware of what is lacking.”


When Jesus asked the man to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, the man could not do it, and was forced to recognize that what he was able to give could not go beyond a certain margin.
The truth of mankind’s limits is one that has been rejected throughout history, often with “tragic consequences,” the pope said, noting that in the Gospels, Jesus offers his help, saying he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to “fulfill them.”
“Jesus gives fulfillment, he comes for this,” he said, adding that the rich man was taken to “the threshold of a leap, where the possibility was opened of ceasing to live for himself and his own works, his own goods, and - precisely because he lacked eternal life - to leave everything to follow the Lord.”

The invitation to the man to sell everything he owned was not a proposal of poverty, but rather “of wealth, the true kind,” Francis said, asking: “who, being able to choose between an original and a copy, would choose the copy?”
“This is the challenge: To find the original, not the copy. Jesus does not offer surrogates, but true life, true love, true wealth!”




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Taken from: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/06/13/pope-says-mediocrity-is-the-biggest-threat-young-people-face/

'The Church is for life', Francis tells Catholic physicians

Pope Francis addresses the International Federation of Associations of Catholic Physicians at the Vatican, May 28, 2018. Credit: Vatican Media.

By Hannah Brockhaus

Vatican City, May 28, 2018 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ideologies which do not acknowledge and uphold the dignity of human life must be resisted and the Catholic Church’s teaching on life affirmed, Pope Francis told a group of Catholic doctors Monday.
“The Church is for life, and her concern is that nothing is against life in the reality of a concrete existence, however weak or defenseless, even if not developed or not advanced,” the pope said May 28 in the Vatican's papal hall.
He noted the “hardships and difficulties” physicians may face when they are faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly when they promote and defend human life “from its conception to its natural end.”

Doctors “are called to affirm the centrality of the patient as a person and his dignity with his inalienable rights, primarily the right to life,” he said.

“The tendency to debase the sick man as a machine to be repaired, without respect for moral principles, and to exploit the weakest by discarding what does not correspond to the ideology of efficiency and profit must be resisted.”
Pope Francis spoke with members of the International Federation of Associations of Catholic Physicians ahead of a congress on the theme of “Holiness of life and the medical profession, from Humanae vitae to Laudato si'” in Zagreb, Croatia May 30-June 2.
Addressing the group, he praised the fidelity of their associations to the directives of the Magisterium and encouraged them to “continue with serenity and determination on this path.”
To be a Catholic doctor means to feel driven by “faith and from communion with the Church” to grow in Christian and professional formation and to know the laws of nature in order “to better serve life,” he said, stressing that the participation of Catholic physicians in the life and mission of the Church is “so necessary.”

Francis noted that the health and medical fields are a part of the advance of the “technocratic cultural paradigm,” which adores human power without limits and makes everything irrelevant if it does not serve a person’s own interests.

“Be more and more aware that today it is necessary and urgent that the action of the Catholic physician presents itself with an unmistakable clarity on the level of personal and associative testimony,” he urged.
He also encouraged working together with professionals of other religious convictions who also recognize the dignity of the human person, and with priests and religious who work in the healthcare field.
Continue the journey “with joy and generosity,” he said, “in collaboration with all the people and institutions that share the love of life and endeavor to serve it in its dignity and sacredness.”


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Taken from: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/the-church-is-for-life-francis-tells-catholic-physicians-48123

God is not indifferent – he’s close and personal, Pope Francis says

• In Catholic News Agency, Vatican
• Elise Harris
  May 27, 2018
  CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY

Pope Francis marked the feast of the Holy Trinity stressing the personal love and interest God has in each one of his children, saying the Lord is not ever far away, but is an attentive and loving father to all.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis marked the feast of the Holy Trinity stressing the personal love and interest God has in each one of his children, saying the Lord is not ever far away, but is an attentive and loving father to all.

“God does not want so much to reveal to us that he exists, but rather that he is the ‘God with us,’ that he loves us, is interested in our personal story and cares for each person, from the smallest to the greatest,” the pope said May 27.
Even though God is in heaven, he is also on earth, Francis said, adding that because of this, “we don’t believe in a distant, indifferent entity.”
“On the contrary, (we believe) in the love that created the universe and generated a people, became flesh, died and rose for us, and as the Holy Spirit transforms everything and brings it to fullness.”
Francis spoke to the nearly 25,000 pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus address. In his speech, he focused on the day’s feast of the Holy Trinity, and the readings from the Book of Romans, as well as the Gospel reading from Matthew.
The feast of the Trinity, Francis said, is not only an invitation to contemplate and praise Jesus Christ, but it is also an opportunity to celebrate “with ever-new wonder the God of love, who freely offers his life to us and asks us to spread it in the world.”
He then turned to the second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, in which the apostle speaks of how Christians are sons of God, and are able to call him “abba,” meaning “father.”
St. Paul, the pope said, experienced first-hand the deep transformation of the God of love, who allows us to not only call him “Father,” but more personally, “dad,” and who gives us the ability to call on him “with the total confidence of a child who abandons themselves in the arms of the one who gave them life.”
Through his action in each person, the Holy Spirit “makes it so that Jesus Christ is not reduced to a person of the past, but that we feel close to him, our contemporary, and that we experience the joy of being beloved children of God,” Francis said.
He noted that Christians are not alone, he said, because the Holy Spirit was sent to guide and accompany them.
And thanks to both the presence of the Spirit and the strength he offers, “we can realize with serenity the mission that he entrusted to us: to announce and bear witness to his Gospel to everyone and so dilate communion with him and the joy that comes from it.”
Pope Francis closed his address saying the feast of the Holy Trinity “makes us contemplate the mystery of a God who incessantly creates, redeems and sanctifies, always with love and for love, and to every creature that welcomes him, he gives the gift of reflecting a ray of his beauty, goodness and truth.”
He prayed that Mary would help each person to “fulfill with joy the mission of bearing witness to the world, thirsty for love, that the meaning of life is precisely infinite love, the concrete love of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
After leading pilgrims in praying the traditional Marian prayer, Francis voiced gratitude for the recent beatification of Sister Leonella Sborbati, a nun with the Consolata Missionaries who was killed in Somalia in 2006.
He asked pilgrims to join him in praying for Africa, “so that there is peace there,” and led faithful in praying a Hail Mary for the continent.

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Taken from: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/05/27/god-is-not-indifferent-hes-close-and-personal-pope-francis-says/