During his daily morning Mass in Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis stressed how the Church must be poor, humble, and completely focused on God. If it is tempted into “ostentation” and “vanity,” he said, it will not accomplish its mission.
According to Vatican Radio, the Holy Father reflected on how the “poor Church must have no riches other than her Spouse.”
Clarifying, he noted, it is appropriate for the Church to, in certain respects, shed its light.
“It’s true,” the 77-year-old Pontiff admitted, that sometimes the Lord can ask his Church to take a bit of light itself, in the sense that, “If the Church’s mission is to illuminate humanity, the light that is given must be only one received by Christ in an attitude of humility.”
All the services the Church does help us “to get that light,” he said. “A service without this light is not good.”
Although the Pontiff reminded faithful that over the centuries, the Church wanted to have its own light, he decried, “She was wrong.”
Recalling the widow in today’s Gospel and how she was unknown, humble, and focused on her lost spouse, he stressed the Church must be likewise be focused on her Spouse: Christ, the Eucharist.
“The great virtue of the Church,” he said, “must not shine on its own, but to shine the light that comes from her spouse.”
When the Church is faithful to her Spouse, he said, it is joyful to receive the light from Him, to be in this sense the ‘widow,’ completely devoted.
The Pope gave three ways the Church can do this.
“When the Church is humble, when the Church is poor, even when the Church confesses his misery,” the Holy Father stated, “the Church is faithful.”
The Church, the Pope said, must say, “I am dark, but the light comes from there!” and must be, “Humble. Without boasting of having its own light, always seeking the light that comes from the Lord.”
Pope Francis concluded saying all faithful must throw away “everything we have from life,” leaving nothing for ourselves, and instead must give “everything for the Lord and for others.”
