December 13, 2013 - Christians who are allergic to preachers have always something
to criticize, but they are actually afraid of opening themselves to the Holy Spirit,
and this makes them sad. Pope Francis made this observation at Mass Friday morning
in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta residence in the Vatican. The Pope was reflecting
on the Gospel of Mathew where Jesus compared His generation to children who refuse
to dance to music or mourn to a funeral song, and condemn John the Baptist as possessed,
and Jesus as a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. For
the dissatisfied, the Pope said, nothing is alright. They are not open to the Word
of the God, the Pope said adding they always have a reason to criticize the preacher.
He explained that the people of the time of Jesus sought refuge in a very elaborate
religion with moral precepts like the Pharisees, in political compromise like the
Sadducees, in social revolution like the zealots or in gnostic spirituality like the
Essenes. For them the system was clean and fine, but without any preacher. Jesus
reminds them that their fathers were allergic to the prophets, persecuting and even
killing them. Such people claim to accept the truth of revelation but reject preachers,
preferring a life in the cage of precepts, compromise, their revolutionary plan or
their disembodied spirituality. The same is true of Christians who are closed, caged
in, sad and not free, because they are afraid of the freedom of the Holy Spirit that
comes through preaching. This, the Pope said, is the scandal of preaching that St.
Paul speaks about – the scandal of the Cross. They are scandalized even more that
God speaks to us and saves us through the Son of Man who ended up as a criminal.
These sad Christians, the Pope said, do not believe in the Holy Spirit and the in
the freedom that comes from preaching, which cautions, teaches and even slaps us;
but it is the very freedom that makes the Church grow. The Pope thus urged all to
pray that we don’t become sad Christians, shutting off the Holy Spirit and the freedom
that comes through the scandal of preaching.