Pope calls Churchmen not to be impediment to God’s grace

May 08, 2014 - Those who are called to administer the sacraments in the Church must make way for the grace of God to act and not be obstacles to it with bureaucracy. Pope Francis stressed this point in his homily at Mass, Thursday morning, at the Casa Santa Marta chapel in the Vatican. It is God who evangelizes, the Pope said denouncing excessive bureaucracy in the Church that sometimes can prevent persons from approaching God. Taking his inspiration from the episode of the Acts of the Apostles where Philip is urged by God’s angel to evangelize the Ethiopian eunuch, the Holy Father offered three qualities of a Christian – namely docility to the Holy Spirit, dialogue and trust in God’s grace. Docile to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Pope explained, Philip leaves everything to reach the chariot of the eunuch, the minister of the Queen of Ethiopia. The encounter of the Apostle with the Ethiopian is an occasion for evangelization which takes place in the form of a dialogue, where Philip scrupulously respects the spiritual sentiments of the other, who was unable to understand the scripture passage he was reading. This arouses in the eunuch the desire to be baptized, and Philip brings God’s grace of baptism to the new Christian. Grace is more important than all bureaucracy, the Pope stressed saying “it is God who evangelizes.” He lamented that many times in the Church we become a factory of impediments, so that people may not reach God’s grace. “May the Lord make us understand this,” Pope Francis prayed.