CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- Saying Mass for some 500 Italian parliamentarians Thursday, Pope Francis warned them of the corruption of the heart, imploring them not to slip from the theology of faith to a theology of duty.<\/p>\n\tDescribing the religious leaders whom Christ encountered, Pope Francis said March 27, \u201cthey resisted the salvation of the Lord\u2019s love, and thus slipped away from the faith, from a theology of faith to a theology of duty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tBecause of the large number of parliamentarians who had asked to participate in a daily Mass with him, Pope Francis said Mass for them in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica rather than in the Domus Sanctae Marthae chapel. Roughly half of Italy's parliament attended the Mass.<\/p>\n
\tPope Francis preached on the readings from the day, which he described as \u201ca dialogue between the lamentations of God and the justifications of men.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe first reading gave voice to the \u201clamentation of God\u201d toward a generation that did not welcome God\u2019s messengers, and at the same time justified itself despite its sins.<\/p>\n
\tThe \u201cpain of the Lord\u201d is caused by those who \u201cturned their back\u201d on him, and this can be seen also in the reading of the Gospel, which recounted the blindness to God of the spiritual leaders of Jesus\u2019 time, Pope Francis said.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cGod\u2019s lamentation comes from the fact that God had done much, much work to remove idolatry from the hearts of his people, and to make them docile to his Word. He did this for centuries and centuries, until the advent of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAnd when Jesus came, he recounted, some called him a great prophet, and some a servant of demons, and \u201cGod\u2019s people was alone, while the ruling classes \u2013 the doctors of the law, the Sadducees, the Pharisees \u2014 were closed into their ideas \u2026 their ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tPope Francis said that at Jesus\u2019 time, the ruling class \u201chad become so hardened in their sin that they were corrupt \u2026 they could not hear the call, since they were so closed, so far away from the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tJesus watched the people of God and was moved by them, since they were \u201csheep without a shepherd,\u201d and so he \u201cwent to the poor, to the sick, to everyone, to the widows, to those affected with leprosy to heal them. And he spoke to all of them with such authority that people admired him,\u201d Pope Francis recounted.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cAll of us who are here are sinners,\u201d Pope Francis underscored. But the corrupt were \u201cmore than sinners,\u201d because \u201cit was impossible for them to listen to the Lord\u2019s voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt is very hard for a corrupt person to turn back. The sinner can, yes, because the Lord is merciful and awaits us all. But the corrupt are fixed on their affairs, and these people were corrupt. They therefore sought to justify themselves, because Jesus, with his simplicity, but with his strength in God, made trouble for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cAnd, step by step, they ended up convincing themselves that they had to kill Jesus,\u201d because they \u201cresisted the salvation of the love of the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThey rejected the Lord\u2019s love and this rejection put them on a path that was not the dialectic of freedom offered by the Lord, but that of the logic of necessity, where there is no room for the Lord. In the dialectic of freedom, there is the good Lord who loves us, who loves us very much! Rather, in the logic of necessity, there is no place for God: this must be done, this must be done, this must\u2026They have become behavioral: men of good manners, but bad habits. Jesus calls them \u2018whitewashed tombs.\u2019 This is the pain of the Lord, the pain of God, the lamentation of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tPope Francis then invited the legislators to consider Lord\u2019s invitation given to them, the invitation to the dialectic of freedom, where there is love.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOn this path of Lent it will do us well to think about this invitation from the Lord to love \u2026 and to ask ourselves, all of us \u2026am I on this path? Do I risk justifying myself and take another path?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe pray,\u201d he concluded, \u201cthat the Lord gives us the grace to always go down the path of salvation, to open ourselves to the salvation that only comes from God, through faith \u2013 not from what was proposed by these 'doctors of duty,' who had lost the faith, and who led the people with this pastoral theology of duty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe ask this grace: Give me, O Lord, the grace to be open to your salvation. Lent is for this. God loves us all: he loves us all! Make the effort to be open: this is all he asks of us. \u2018Open the door. The rest, I will do.\u2019 Let us allow him to come into us, to caress us and give us salvation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Vatican City, Mar 27, 2014 \/ 05:15 pm (CNA\/EWTN News).- Saying Mass for some 500 Italian parliamentarians Thursday, Pope Francis warned them of the corruption of the heart, imploring them not to slip from the theology of faith to a theology of duty.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vatican"],"yoast_head":"\n
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