2023-09-17 00:06:09
During the audience with the participants in the V World Congress of Benedictine Oblates, the Pope once more urges not to lock oneself in individualism and indifference to those in need and not to fall into gossip that “dirties” others.
Tiziana Campisi – Vatican City
It is a new reflection on welcome that Pope Francis develops, renewing the invitation to have consideration for those who seek hospitality and to privilege the poor. He did so when meeting the participants in the V World Congress of Benedictine Oblates, received in the Clementine Room of the Apostolic Palace.
Sometimes, however, it seems that our society is slowly suffocating in the sealed coffers of selfishness, individualism and indifference.
Today “the temptation is to close in on oneself,” the Pope added, and this is also done with “gossiping, dirtying others,” judging them and closing in on oneself. And instead the “tongue is for praising God, not for gossiping regarding others,” says Francis.
A heart dilated by love
To the Benedictine Oblates, the Pope reminds them that Saint Benedict, in the Prologue of his Rule, exhorted them to have a “heart dilated by the inexpressible sovereignty of love,” and observes that precisely “this dilated heart” characterizes the Benedictine spirit and It is “the secret of the great work of evangelization” carried out by the monasticism born with the saint of Norcia. Francis then reflects on three aspects that derive from the dilation of the heart: the search for God, the passion for the Gospel and hospitality.
Radiate the Gospel in everyday life
If the constant search for God is what mainly distinguishes the Benedictine life – oriented to identifying the will of the Creator in his Word, “in the contemplation of creation”, in “daily events” and “in living work as prayer” -, the passion for the Gospel is the industriousness that derives from it. Francis invites Benedictine religious to transform the contexts of daily life, “working like yeast in the dough, with competence and responsibility, and at the same time with meekness and compassion,” like monasticism in the Middle Ages, which “with its model of evangelical life characterized by ora et labora”, led to the “peaceful conversion” and the “integration of numerous populations.” The goal is to bring the Gospel to everyday life.
In a globalized but fragmented world, hurried and given over to consumerism, in contexts in which family and social roots sometimes seem almost to dissolve, we do not need Christians who point the finger, but rather passionate witnesses who radiate the Gospel “in life.” through life.” And the temptation is always this: from Christian witnesses to Christian accusers. There is only one accuser: the devil. Let’s not play the role of the devil, let’s play the role of Jesus, of the school of Jesus, of the Beatitudes.
The welcome recommended by Saint Benedict
Lastly, hospitality. The Pope highlights the instructions that Saint Benedict dictated in this regard: the kindness that must be shown to the guest, participation in moments of prayer, sharing what one has. And then the attention that must be paid especially to the poor and pilgrims “because it is precisely in them where Christ is received in a very special way,” Benedict said.
As Oblates, your great monastery is the world, the city, the workplace, and there you are called to be models of hospitality in respect for those who knock at your door and in predilection for the poor.
Given all this, Francis invites the Oblates to continue expanding their hearts, and to give them every day to the love of God, without ceasing to “seek it, witness it with passion and welcome it in the poorest.”
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