\nHow many women and men religious consume \u2014 and I repeat the verb, consume \u2014 their lives caressing \u2018rubbish,\u2019 caressing those that the world throws away, that the world despises, that the world wishes didn\u2019t exist, those who the world today \u2014 with methods and new analyses that we have, when it\u2019s foreseen that one can come with a degenerative illness, it\u2019s proposed to \u201csend them back\u201d before they\u2019re born. The smallest.<\/p>\n
And a young woman full of dreams begins her consecrated life giving life to the tenderness of God, to his mercy. Sometimes they don\u2019t understand, they don\u2019t realize, but, how wonderful it is for God, and how much good it does to a person, for example the smile of someone with muscle spasms who doesn\u2019t know how to do it. Or when they want to kiss you and they slobber on your face. This is the tenderness of God. This is the mercy of God. Or when they are mad and they strike you. Consume my life like this? With this \u201crubbish\u201d in the eyes of the world. This speaks to us only of one person. It speaks to us of Jesus, who because of the pure mercy of the Father made himself nothing. He emptied himself, says Philippians, chapter 2. He made himself nothing. And these people to whom you dedicate your life imitate Jesus, not because they wanted to, but because the world brought them here like this. They are nothing. And they hide them and they don\u2019t show them or they don\u2019t visit them. And if they can and there\u2019s still time, they \u201csend them back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thank you for what you do and in you, thank you to all the women and all the women consecrated to the service of the useless, because with them you can\u2019t start a business, you can\u2019t make money, absolutely nothing constructive is brought forward, so to speak, with these brothers and sisters of ours, with these least ones, with the smallest. There Jesus shines forth and there my decision for Jesus shines forth. Thank you and thank you to all men and women consecrated who do this.<\/p>\n
Father, I\u2019m not a nun. I don\u2019t take care of sick people. I\u2019m a priest. And I have a parish, or I help the pastor of a parish. Which one is my Jesus of predilection? Which one is the least one? Which one most shows me the mercy of the Father? Where do I have to find him?<\/p>\n
Obviously I continue following the protocol of Matthew 25, there you have all of them: the hungry, the imprisoned, the sick, there you will find them. But there is a privileged place for the priest where this last one, this least one, this smallest one is found \u2014 and it is the confessional. And there, when this man or this woman shows you his misery \u2014 careful because it\u2019s the same misery that you have and from which God saved you, eh? from getting to that point. When he or she shows you his misery, please, don\u2019t scold him. Don\u2019t scold him, don\u2019t punish him. If you don\u2019t have sin, throw the first stone. But only under that condition. If not, think of your sins and think that you could be that person and think that you could potentially fall even lower, and think that you in this moment have in your hands a treasure, which is the mercy of the Father. Please, priests, don\u2019t get tired of forgiving. Be forgivers. Don\u2019t get tired of forgiving, like Jesus did. Don\u2019t hide in fears or in rigidities. Just like this nun and all of those who are in the same ministry as she is, they don\u2019t get furious when they find a sick person who is dirty, but instead serve him, clean him, take care of him. Just like this, you, when a penitent comes, don\u2019t react badly, don\u2019t get neurotic, don\u2019t cast him out of the confessional, don\u2019t scold him. Jesus embraced them. Jesus loved them.<\/p>\n
Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pope Francis preached an extraordinary extemporaneous\u00a0sermon in answer to a question in Cuba. It was on the consecrated life and holy orders and how these people are called by God to make a gift of themselves to others, to be the mercy of God to the least of these. I think that what the Holy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":27476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5203,134,1631,7593,241,753,3346,48,1],"tags":[2782,3102],"class_list":["post-30519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-caregiving-2","category-clergy","category-holy-father-2","category-holy-father-3","category-jesus","category-nuns","category-poverty-2","category-pro-life","category-uncategorized","tag-pope-francis","tag-the-least-of-these"],"yoast_head":"\n
Pope Francis and Caring for the Least of These<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pope Francis preached an extraordinary extemporaneous\u00a0sermon in answer to a question in Cuba. It was on the consecrated life and holy orders and how these\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2015\/09\/pope-francis-and-caring-for-the-least-of-these\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Francis and Caring for the Least of These\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pope Francis preached an extraordinary extemporaneous\u00a0sermon in answer to a question in Cuba. 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<\/a>Pope Francis preached an extraordinary extemporaneous\u00a0sermon in answer to a question in Cuba. It was on the consecrated life and holy orders and how these people are called by God to make a gift of themselves to others, to be the mercy of God to the least of these.<\/p>\n