Vatican City, 19 May 2015 (VIS) - “Our
vocation is to listen when the Lord asks us: 'Console my people'.
Indeed, we are asked to console, to help, to encourage, without
discrimination, all our brothers who are oppressed by the weight of
their crosses, without ever tiring of working to lift them up again
with the strength that comes only from God”, said Pope Francis
yesterday afternoon to the bishops of the Italian Episcopal
Conference, as he inaugurated the 68th assembly, to be held in the
Vatican to analyse the reception of the Apostolic Exhortation
“Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel).
Proclaiming the Gospel today, a
difficult moment in history, requires prelates to “go against the
grain: or rather, to be joyful witnesses of the Risen Christ to
transmit joy and hope to others”, said the Holy Father, who went on
to illustrate the importance of the “ecclesial sensibility”,
which means assuming the same sentiments as Christ, “sentiments of
humility, compassion, concreteness and wisdom”.
A sensibility that also involves “not
being timid … in denouncing and fighting against a widespread
mentality of the public and private corruption that shamelessly
impoverishes families, pensioners, honest workers and Christian
communities, discarding the young, who are systematically deprived of
any hope for their future, and above all marginalising the weak and
the needy. It is an ecclesial sensibility that, as good pastors,
makes us go forth towards the People of God to defend them from
ideological colonisations that take away their identity and human
dignity”.
This sensibility is also made tangible
in pastoral decisions and in the elaboration of documents “where
the abstract theoretical-doctrinal aspect must not prevail, as if our
directions were intended not for our People or our country, but only
for a few scholars or specialists – instead we must make the effort
to translate them into concrete and comprehensible proposals”,
emphasised Francis.
The strengthening of the essential role
of the laity is another of the concrete applications of pastoral
sensibility, since “laypeople with an authentic Christian formation
should not need a bishop-guide … to assume their own
responsibilities at all levels, political to social, economic to
legislative. However, they do need a bishop-pastor”.
Finally, the ecclesial sensibility is
revealed in a tangible way “in collegiality and in the communion
between bishops and their priests; in the communion between bishops
themselves; between dioceses which are materially and vocationally
rich and those in difficulty; between the periphery and the centre;
between episcopal conferences and the bishops, and the Successor of
Peter”. He remarked, “in some parts of the world we see a
widespread weakening of collegiality, both in pastoral planning and
in the shared undertaking of economic and financial commitments. The
habit of checking the reception of programmes and the implementation
of projects is lacking. For example, conferences or events are
organised which promote the usual voices, anaesthetising the
Communities, approving choices, opinions and people, instead of
allowing us to be transported towards the horizons where the Holy
Spirit asks us to go”.
“Why do we let the religious
institutes, monasteries and congregations age so much, almost to the
point of no longer giving evangelical witness faithful to the
founding charism? Why do we not try to regroup them before it is too
late?”. This is a global problem that, as the Holy Father stated,
indicates a lack of ecclesial sensibility.
“I will end here, after have
presented to you a few examples of weakened ecclesial sensibility due
to the need to continually face enormous global problems and the
crisis that spares not even the Christian and ecclesial identity
itself”, he concluded, asking the Lord to grant to all during the
Jubilee Year of Mercy “the joy of rediscovering and making fruitful
God's mercy, with which we are all called to console every man and
every woman of our time”.
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