At the audience with the participants of the Fifth World Congress of the Benedictine Oblates, the Pope once again calls on them not to fall in love with individualism and indifference to those in need, and not to fall into chatter that “stains” others.
Tiziana Campisi – Vatican City
It is a new reflection on hospitality that Pope Francis develops by renewing the invitation to have respect for those who seek hospitality and to give preference to the poor. The Pope expressed his thoughts in the speech to the participants of the Fifth World Congress of the Benedictine Oblates, received in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.
Instead, sometimes it seems as if our society is slowly suffocating in the closed vaults of selfishness, individualism and indifference.
Today “the temptation is to close ourselves off,” the Pope adds, and this also happens through “talking about defiling others,” condemning them and closing ourselves in on ourselves. And instead, “language is used to praise God, not to gossip about others,” says Francis.
The Pope gives his speech
A heart expanded by love
The Pope reminds the Benedictine Oblates that in the prologue to his Rule St. Benedict urged them to have a “heart enlarged by the inexpressible sovereignty of love,” noting that it is “this enlarged heart” that enlarges the Benedictine spirit characterized and “the…” is secret of the great work of evangelization” carried out by the monasticism born with the Saint of Norcia. Francis then reflects on three aspects that arise from the expansion of the heart: the search for God, the passion for the gospel and hospitality.
Spread the gospel in everyday life
If the constant search for God primarily characterizes the Benedictine life – which aims to discern the will of the Creator in his Word, “in the contemplation of creation”, in “daily events” and “in living work as prayer”. – then the… passion for the gospel is the diligence that comes from it. And so Francis’ call to the Benedictine Oblates is to change the contexts of everyday life by working “like leaven, with competence and responsibility and at the same time with gentleness and compassion”, like monasticism in the Middle Ages “With its on ora et labora based model of evangelical life”, he led to “peaceful conversion” and to the “integration of numerous population groups”. The goal is to bring the gospel into everyday life.
In a globalized but fragmented world, in haste and committed to consumerism, in contexts where family and social roots sometimes seem almost to dissolve, what is needed is not Christians pointing fingers, but passionate witnesses who share the Gospel ” from life to life.” And the temptation is always this: from the Christian witness to the Christian accuser. There is only one accuser: the devil. Let us not play the role of the devil, but the role of Jesus, the school of Jesus, the Beatitudes .
The group photo with the Benedictine wafers
The reception recommended by San Benedetto
Finally hospitality. The Pope underlines the indications given by Saint Benedict in this context: the kindness that one must show to the guest, the participation in moments of prayer, the sharing of what one has. And then the concern to be reserved especially for the poor and pilgrims, “because it is precisely in them that Christ is received in a very special way,” said Benedict.
As Oblates, your great monastery is the world, the city, the workplace, and there you are called to be models of hospitality, with respect for those who knock on your door and with affection for the poor.
Faced with all this, Francis calls on the Oblates to continue to enlarge their hearts and to surrender them every day to the love of God, without ceasing to “seek it, to bear witness to it with passion, to welcome it into the poorest”.