Pope Francis: don't be 'tourists' on the spiritual journey of faith
(Vatican Radio) Where are you on your spiritual journey? Are you wandering aimlessly
like a tourist? Have you stopped or lost your way? Or are you heading straight for
your destination? Those questions were at the heart of Pope Francis’ reflections during
his homily at Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Monday morning. Philippa Hitchen
reports:
Reflecting
on the day’s readings from Isaiah and St John’s Gospel Pope Francis distinguished
between three different types of Christians and how they live their spiritual lives.
Before God asks anything of us, the Pope said, He always promises us a new life of
joy, so the essence of our Christian life is always to journey in hope and trust towards
those promises.
But there are many Christians whose hope is weak and while
they believe and follow the commandments, they have come to a standstill in their
spiritual lives. Pope Francis said God cannot use them as a leaven among his people
because they have stopped and they’re no longer moving forward.
Secondly, he
said there are those among us who have taken the wrong turning and lost our way. Of
course, the Pope continued, we all sometimes take the wrong road, but the real problem
arises if we don’t turn back when we realize that we’ve made a mistake.
The
model of a true believer who follows the promises of faith, Pope Francis said, is
the royal official from today’s Gospel reading, who asks Jesus to heal his son and
does not doubt for a second when the Master tells him the child has been cured. But
unlike that man, the Pope said, there are many Christians who deceive themselves and
wander aimlessly without moving forward.
These people, Pope Francis said are
perhaps the most dangerous group because they wander through life like existential
tourists without a goal and without taking God’s promises seriously. But the Lord
asks us not to stop, not to lose our way and not to wander through life. He asks us
to journey on towards his promises like the official who believed what Jesus told
him.
Despite our human condition as sinners who take the wrong turning, the
Pope concluded, the Lord always gives us grace to turn back. Lent, he said, is a good
time to consider whether we are journeying forward or whether we have come to a standstill.
If we have chosen the wrong road, we should go to Confession and return to the right
way. If we are a theological tourist wandering aimlessly through life, we must ask
the Lord for grace to head off again on the journey towards the promises of our faith.