In the video message with the prayer request for the month of February, Francis invites us to pray for the communities. Parishes “must be restored to schools of service and generosity, with doors always open to the excluded. And for those trapped. For all.”
Vatican News
This Monday (01/30) Pope Francis’ video message was published with the intention of praying for the month of February.
The Pope invites the entire Catholic Church to pray for parishes through the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.
The Holy Father begins the video message by saying that “we should put a sign saying ‘Free entry’ on the door of the parishes”.
Parishes must be closed communities, without bureaucracy, centered on the people and where the gift of the sacraments is to be found. They must once again become schools of service and generosity, with doors always open to the excluded. And those included. To all.
The Pope recalls that “municipalities are not an association for a few, something that transmits a certain social belonging”. According to Francis, the richness of the Church is not in the buildings but in the people who come to them. The images in the video from communities around the world show encounters, talks, distribution of material to those most in need, visits to the elderly and sick, concerts, internal and external events. It’s a video full of life. The life that flows in parishes and that continues to make them in a world in which it is becoming increasingly easy to withdraw to oneself and which prefers more virtual places of encounter to facetoface encounters for many, into reference points where art learned from the encounter.
In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, published at the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis emphasizes the centrality of the parish: “Although it is certainly not the only evangelizing institution,” he writes, quoting an expression of John Paul II in Christifideles laici, The parish has the peculiarity of “being the Church herself, living in the homes of her sons and daughters”. For this reason, it must be “connected to people’s homes and lives” and not become a separate structure from people, or a select group of people to fend for themselves. This “call to review and renew parishes,” he adds, “has not yet borne enough fruit to bring them even closer to the people.”
Please be brave. Let’s all reconsider the style of our parishes. Let us pray that parishes, which place communion, the communion of persons and ecclesial communion at the heart, become more and more communities of faith, fraternity and welcoming of the most needy.