Vatican City, 22 March 2015 (VIS) –
The final stage of the Pope's visit to Naples yesterday took place on
the Caracciolo seafront promenade, where he met with the people of
the city. The Holy Father again answered three questions. The first
was posed by a young woman who wanted to know how to interpret God's
silence when faced with difficulties such as corruption, and how to
respond to this with signs of hope.
“God, our God is a God of words, He
is a God of gestures, and He is a God of silence. We know the God of
words because in the Bible there are the words of God: God talks to
us and seeks us. The God of gestures is the God around us. … And
then there is the God of silence. Think of the great silences in the
Bible: for instance, the silence in the heart of Abraham when he went
to offer his son as a sacrifice. …. But God's greatest silence was
the Cross: Jesus heard his Father's silence, to the point of defining
it as abandonment. … And then there occurred God's miracle, that
word, that grandiose gesture of the Resurrection. Our God is also the
God of silence, and there are silences of God's that cannot be
explained if you do not look to the Cross. For example, why do
children suffer? Where is there a word from God to explain why
children suffer? … I do not say that the silence of God can be
'understood', but we can draw nearer to God's silences by looking
upon the crucified Christ, Christ abandoned from the Mount of Olives
unto the Cross. … But 'God created us to be happy'. Yes, it is
true. But very often He says nothing. And this is the truth. I cannot
deceive you by saying, 'No, have faith and all will go well, you will
be happy, you will have good fortune, you will have money …'. No,
our God also remains in silence. Remember: He is the God of words,
the God of gestures, and the God of silences, and you have to unite
these three things in your life. This is what I can say to you. I am
sorry. I have no other 'recipe'”.
The second question was from an elderly
woman, aged 95, who thanked the Pope for his defence of old age, a
gift that today's society does not appreciate or discards, and
commented that she had found a Christian community that showed her
affection and gave her strength, and which had become like a family
to her.
“You used a key word for our culture:
'discard'. The elderly are discarded, because this society throws
away what is no longer useful, what is 'disposable'. Children are not
useful, so why have them? … We discard children, and we discard the
elderly, because we leave them by themselves. We elderly have
ailments and problems, and we bring problems to others, and people
discard us perhaps because of these ailments, because we are no
longer useful. And then there is this habit of – excuse the
expression – leaving people to die, and since we like using
euphemisms, we use a technical word: euthanasia. But euthanasia is
carried out not only by injection; there is also a hidden euthanasia,
that of no longer giving medicine, of not offering cures, of making
life sad, and so one dies, one expires. … But this path that you
have found is the best medicine for a long life: closeness,
friendship, tenderness. … Solitude is the most potent poison for
the elderly. … Sons and daughters, I remind you of the fourth
commandment. Are you affectionate with your parents? Do you embrace
them, do you tell them you love them? … Examine your consciences.
Affection is the best medicine for the elderly”.
Finally, a married couple asked the
Pope how best to communicate the beauty of the family, through a
pastoral ministry of outreach rather than defence.
“The family is in crisis: this is
true, and it is not new”, answered Francis. “Young people do not
want to get married, preferring instead to live together, easily and
without compromises; then, if a child comes along, they marry out of
necessity. … The crisis of the family is a social reality. Then
there are the ideological colonisations of the family, modes and
proposals from Europe and also from overseas. The error of the human
mind that is gender theory creates a lot of confusion. … What can
we do, faced with such active secularisation? What can we do with
these ideological colonisations? What can be done with a culture that
does not consider the family, in which people prefer not to marry? I
do not have a recipe: the Church is aware of this and the Lord has
inspired the convocation of a Synod on the family, on its many
problems. … For example, there is the problem of preparation for
marriage. Preparation is not a question of a course: became a married
couple in eight lessons. … It is another thing entirely. It begins
at home, with friends, with youth, during engagement. Engagement has
lost the sacred meaning of respect. Today, normally, engagement and
cohabitation are almost the same thing. Not always, as there are good
examples. How can we prepare an engagement to mature? It is like
fruit. If you do not gather it when it is ripe, it is not good. But
all this is a crisis, and I ask you to pray a lot. I have no recipes
for this, but the witness of love and the witness of how to resolve
problems are important”.
At the end of the meeting, the Pope
transferred to the maritime station of Naples in order to depart by
helicopter. He arrived in Rome at 7 p.m.
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