Friday, November 1, 2024
01/11/2024 – (Fuente: Vatican News) Before the Angelus, on the Solemnity of All Saints, Francis recalled that a holy life, which follows the Beatitudes, is a “gift from God”, but it also demands “our response” to his designs “and his good inspirations”. Put yourself, as He taught us, at the service of others.
Let us look at the Saints, brothers and sisters “shaped by the beatitudes”, “people ‘full of God’, incapable of remaining indifferent to the needs of their neighbors, witnesses of luminous paths, also possible for us.” And let us ask ourselves if we know how to ask God in prayer for “the gift of a holy life,” allowing ourselves to be guided “by the good impulses that his Spirit” arouses in us, practicing “the beatitudes of the Gospel in the environments” in which we live. This, therefore, was the invitation that Pope Francis addressed to everyone, before praying the Angelus, on this Solemnity of All Saints, rereading the Gospel of Matthew proposed by the liturgy, in which Jesus proclaims the Beatitudes, “the identity card of the Christian and the path to holiness”, as recalled in the apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate.
He shows us a path, the path of love, which He Himself first traveled when becoming man, and which for us is both a gift from God and our response.
The path of love and holiness is a gift from God
It is a gift from God, that is why “it is above all the Lord whom we ask to make us saints, to make our hearts similar to his,” as the Pope emphasizes in the new encyclical Dilexit nos. It is He who, with His grace, “heals us and frees us from everything that prevents us from loving as He loves us,” so that in us, as Blessed Carlo Acutis said, there is always “less me to leave room for God.” .
But then God waits for our response
Our response, Francis continued, is fundamental, because God “offers us his holiness, but does not impose it on us.” “It is planted in us,” he clarifies, “but then he waits and respects our response.”
He allows us to follow his good inspirations, to allow ourselves to be involved in his projects, to make his feelings our own, placing ourselves, as He taught us, at the service of others, with an increasingly universal charity, open and directed to all, open and addressed to the entire world.
The Saints, people “full of God”
And this is seen, the Pontiff stressed, in the lives of the saints, and gave the examples of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, “who in Auschwitz asked to take the place of a father condemned to death,” Saint Teresa of Calcutta, “who “He spent his life serving the poorest of the poor” and Saint Óscar Romero, “murdered on the altar for having defended the rights of the least against the abuses of the arrogant.” In them, in so many other saints of the altars, as in those “next door” with whom we live every day, we recognize brothers and sisters “modeled by the Beatitudes: poor, meek, merciful, hungry and thirsty for justice, architects of peace.”
They are people “full of God”, incapable of remaining indifferent to the needs of their neighbors; They are witnesses of luminous paths, also possible for us.
Do we ask God for the gift of a holy life?
The question for everyone was then:
Do I ask God, in prayer, for the gift of a holy life? Do I allow myself to be guided by the good impulses that his Spirit awakens in me? And do I personally commit to practicing the Beatitudes of the Gospel in the environments in which I live?
And we ask Mary, “Queen of all Saints,” in prayer, Pope Francis concluded, to “help us make our lives a path of holiness.”
