A Christian speaks with love and truth: Pope

Vatican City, 04 June 2013: A Christian should not use a socially mannered language prone to hypocrisy, but speaks truth of the Gospel with the same transparency of children. That was the focal point of Pope Francis’ homily during the Mass celebrated on Tuesday morning at Casa Santa Marta. Concelebrated with the Pope were Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, patriarch of the Armenian Catholics, Sri Lankan Bishop Vianney Fernando, and Archbishop Jean Luis Brugues of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and was attended by a group of Vatican employees. Also present were the President and the Director General of RAI, Anna Maria Tarantola and Luigi Gubitosi, with their families.
From the corrupt to their language of choice: hypocrisy. Pope Francis continued his thread of thought from Monday’s homily in his reflections on the episode recounted in the Gospel of the day: The tribute due to Caesar, and the Pharisees and of the Herodians’ subtle questioning of Christ on the legitimacy of that tribute.
Pope Francis noted that the intention with which they approach Jesus is to make him "fall into a trap." Their question whether it is lawful or not to pay taxes to Caesar is made "with soft words, with beautiful words, with overly sweet words . "They try to show themselves his friends." But it is all false. Pope Francis says this is because, "they do not love the truth" but only themselves, "and so they try to deceive, to involve others in their deceit, their lies. They have a lying heart, they cannot tell the truth:
"Hypocrisy is the very language of corruption. And when Jesus speaks to his disciples, he says: 'let your language be,' Yes, yes! No, no '. Hypocrisy is not a language of truth, because the truth is never given alone. Never! It is always given with love! There is no truth without love. Love is the first truth. If there is no love, there is no truth. They want a true enslaved to their interests. There is a love, of sorts: it is love of self, love for oneself. That narcissist idolatry that leads them to betray others, that leads them to abuse of trust."

Pope Francis continued, what looks like a "persuasive language," instead leads to "errors, to lies." Then with a hint of irony, he noted that those who now approached Jesus and "seem so amiable in their language, are the same people who will go to fetch him on Thursday evening in the Garden of Olives, and will bring him to Pilate on Friday." Instead, Jesus asks exactly the opposite of those who follow him, a language of "yes is yes, no is no," a "language of truth and love."

"And the meekness that Jesus wants us to have has nothing of this adulation. Meekness is simple, it is like that of a child. And a child is not hypocritical, because it is not corrupt. Jesus tells us: 'Let your saying be 'Yes, yes! No, no!"

Finally Pope Francis reflected on "certain inner weakness", stimulated by the "vanity". "We like them to say good things about us." This the "corrupt know" and "with this language try to weaken us"

"Let us think closely today: What is our language? Do we speak in truth, with love, or do we speak with that social language to be polite, even say nice things, which we do not feel? Let our language be evangelical brothers and sisters! Then these hypocrites that start out with flattery, adulation and all of that, end up, through false witnesses, with accusing the very ones they had flattered. Let us ask the Lord today that our language be the language of the simple, the language of a child, the language of the children of God, the language of truth in love."
Source: VR Sedoc