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.