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Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Gratitude, conversion, peace. These are the three "gifts" that Pope Francis waished to ask for himself and for others, in his speech addressed to cardinals, bishops and members of the Roman Curia, during the meeting for the traditional exchange of greetings before Christmas. In his address, delivered in the Benediction Hall of the Apostolic Palace, the Pontiff suggested that, in the event of Christmas precisely "the humility of the Son of God who partook of our human condition" can also become for everyone a "lesson in seeing things as they really are", helping also to recognize that the first motive of the Christian journey is gratitude, and not the complacent pretension or the spiritual pride of considering oneself better than others and of attributing salvific value to one's strategies and programs. Valuable insights and suggestions for all who are existentially engaged in the apostolic mission entrusted by Christ to the Church.
When "one examines one's own existence and the time that has passed" - said the Bishop of Rome in the first part of his speech - the first movement of any authentic step forward in the personal and ecclesial life of faith is never lament and bitterness for the things that went wrong, but "the memory of the good". Fixing our gaze on one's own poverty without also acknowledging God's love for us "would crush us". We would end up "cataloguing our failures and lose sight of what counts most: the graces that the Lord grants us each day", and which generate in us "gratitude", indicated by the Pope as the first of the gifts to ask for this Christmas.
The second "Christmas gift" that the Pontiff wished for all his collaborators in the Roman Curia is the gift of conversion, which is born of gratitude and can never be considered as something acquired forever, a "never-ending story". The worst thing that could happen - remarked the Bishop of Rome - is "to think that we are no longer in need of conversion, either as individuals or as a community", while before the Gospel of Christ "we are always like children needing to learn. The illusion that we have learned everything makes us fall into spiritual pride".
The opposite of the gift of conversion - the Pope added as he continued his speech - is "immobility", which he defined as "the error of trying to crystallize the message of Jesus in a single, perennially valid form", while "preserving means to keep alive and not to imprison the message of Christ". This is why - the Pope remarked - even on the path of the Church "our first big problem is when we put too much trust in ourselves, our strategies and our programmes. This is the “pelagianism” of which I have often spoken". Faced with such a fundamental error, even certain great ecclesial "failures" can take on the connotation of propitious circumstances, "because they remind us that we should not put our trust in ourselves, but in the Lord alone", and free us from the illusion that the simple denunciation of evil solves the problems. An illusion that prevents us from recognizing the most nefarious pitfalls, coming from what Pope Francis defines as the "elegant demons", whom he recalled by inserting in his speech a parenthesis with an evocative historical reference: " In the seventeenth century - the Pope recalled - there was the well-known case of the nuns of Port Royal. One of their abbesses, Mère Angélique, had begun well; she had “charismatically” reformed herself and her monastery, even banishing parents from the cloister. She was a very gifted woman, born to govern, but then she became the soul of the Jansenist resistance, intransigent and unbending even in the face of ecclesiastical authority. Of her and her nuns, it was said that they were "pure as angels, proud as demons". They had cast out the demon, but he had returned seven times stronger, and under the guise of austerity and rigour he had introduced rigidity and the presumption that they were better than others".
The Successor of Peter dwelt on the "deception of feeling themselves just and despising others", recalling how even in the so-called evangelical parables "of mercy" Jesus himself refers to the risk of getting lost "even at home, like the coin of that woman, and we can be unhappy even while formally remaining faithful to our duties, like the elder son of the merciful father". Addressing the collaborators who work in the Curia, the Pope reflected on the fact that, "in a formal sense, we are now living “at home”, within the walls of the institution, in the service of the Holy See, at the heart of the Church. Precisely for this reason, we could easily fall into the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion". Precisely for this reason - added the Bishop of Rome "we are in greater danger than all others, because we are beset by the “elegant demon”, who does not make a loud entrance, but comes with flowers in his hand".
In the final part of his speech, the Pontiff focused on peace as the "third gift" to ask for Christmas. The Pope referred to the "war-torn Ukraine" and to the many ongoing conflicts in different parts of our world. "If we truly want the din of war to cease and give way to peace, then each of us ought to begin with himself or herself", keeping in mind that "besides the violence of arms, there is also verbal violence, psychological violence, the violence of the abuse of power and the hidden violence of gossip, all of which are so deeply harmful and destructive". The Pontiff also suggested what are the only effective antidotes to the spirals of bitterness, backbiting, the vice of mortifying others. Part of the works of mercy - the Successor of Peter remarked - is the benevolence "to accept that the other may also have his limitations". People and institutions, "precisely because they are human, are also limited. A pure Church for the pure is only a repetition of the Cathar heresy. If this were not the case, the Gospel, and the Bible in general, would not have told us of limitations and shortcomings of many of those whom today we acknowledge as saints".
The possibility of restarting that can be experienced in the Christian life does not depend on rigor and methods of self-purification, but rests entirely on forgiveness, which means "always giving another chance", and finds its inexhaustible source in the mystery of Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem and then, "once grown, he let himself be nailed on a cross. There is nothing weaker than one who is crucified, yet that weakness became the demonstration of God’s supreme power. In forgiveness, God’s power is always at work". (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 22/12/2022)
