Pope Francis: The Church should bestow the grace of God not bureaucratic obstacles
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis says those in the Church who are called to administer
the sacraments must leave room for the grace of God and not place bureaucratic obstacles
in the way. This was one of the key points stressed by the Pope in his homily on
Thursday at the Santa Marta residence. Listen to this report by Susy Hodges:
Pope Francis reflected
on the three elements necessary for an effective evangelization, saying it requires
docility, dialogue with people and trusting in the grace of God which is more important
than bureaucracy. For the first element, he pointed to Philip the apostle as an example
of docility.
“He, Philip, he obeys, he’s docile and accepts the calling
from the Lord. Certainly he left behind many things that he ought to have done, because
the Apostles in that period were very busy evangelizing. He leaves everything and
sets off. And this makes us see that without this docility or meekness before the
voice of God nobody can evangelize, nobody can announce Jesus Christ: at the very
most he will be announcing himself. It’s God who calls us, it’s God who starts Philip
on that road. And Philip goes forth. He’s docile.”
Turning to the second
element, Pope Francis noted how Philip uses dialogue in order to announce the gospel
to the Ethiopian minister.
“You can’t evangelize without dialogue. It’s
impossible. Because you must begin from where the person who is to evangelized comes
from. And this is so important. ‘But father, we waste so much time because every
person has his or her own story, he or she comes with their own ideas…’ And, time
is wasted. More time than God wasted when he created the world and He did it well.
Dialogue. Spend time with that person because that person is who God wants you to
evangelize, it’s more important to give him or her the news about Jesus. But according
to who he or she is, not how it should be: how he or she is right now.”
Continuing
his reflection on the story of Philip, Pope Francis points out that in the gospel
the Apostle baptizes the Ethiopian and this places him in the hands of God and of
his grace.
“Let’s think about these three moments of evangelization: the
docility to evangelize: to do what God is requesting, secondly, a dialogue with
the people – but during this dialogue, you begin from where these people come from
– and thirdly, trusting in grace: Grace is more important than all the bureaucracy.
‘What prevents this?’ Remember this. So many times we people of the Church are a
factory to create obstacles so people can’t obtain grace. May the Lord help us to
understand this.”