Vatican City, Apr 27, 2016 / 05:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said that just because someone is an expert in God’s law and a strict adherent to the rules doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to love and serve others.
“It’s not automatic that whoever frequents the House of God and knows his mercy knows how to love their neighbor. It’s not automatic,” the Pope said April 27.
“You can know the bible, you can know all the liturgical norms, you can know theology, but ‘to know’ is not automatically ‘to love,’” he said, explaining that “to love has another path, with intelligence, but it has something more.”
While knowledge and worship are good, they are false unless they are “translated into service of others,” Francis stressed.
“Let us never forget: in front of the suffering of so many people exhausted by hunger, violence, injustice, we cannot remain spectators. To ignore the suffering of man means to ignore God!”
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Wednesday general audience, which he has dedicated to the topic of mercy as seen in scripture for the Jubilee of mercy.
In his speech, the Pope focused on the Gospel passage in Luke in which Jesus recounts the parable of the Good Samaritan.
After telling the crowd that they must “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and will all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus is questioned by a doctor of the law, who presses him on who qualifies as a neighbor.
What this doctor of the law is looking for, Francis said, is “a clear rule that permits him to classify the others into ‘neighbor’ and ‘non-neighbors.’ Those who can become neighbors and those who cannot become neighbors.”
Jesus then responds with a parable including a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan. The first two are linked to their worship at the temple, while the third, the Samaritan, is “a schismatic Jew, considered as a stranger, a pagan and impure.”
Francis noted that the Law of the Lord obliged the priest and the Levite to help the suffering, injured man, yet they both pass without stopping. The despised Samaritan, on the other hand, doesn’t walk by the wounded man like the other two, but instead had compassion.
“That is the difference,” Pope Francis said. “The other two saw, but their hearts remained closed, cold. Instead the heart of the Samaritan was in tune with the heart of God.”
Compassion is “an essential characteristic of God’s mercy,” the Pope continued, explaining that the compassion shown by the Good Samaritan is the same that God shows to each one of us.
The Lord, he said, “doesn’t ignore us, he knows our pains, he knows how much we need help and consolation. He comes close to us and never abandons us.”
In taking the wounded man to a hotel, caring for him and paying the bill, the Samaritan teaches us that love and compassion “are not a vague feeling,” but mean taking care of one another even to the point of paying the expense in person.
“It means to compromise oneself taking all the steps needed in order to draw close to the other, to the point of immersing yourself with them,” he added.
Pope Francis then turned to Jesus' question at the end of the passage, when he asks the doctors of the law which figure in the parable was a neighbor to the wounded man. The unanimous answer, he noted was “the one who had compassion.”
Francis noted that this answer differed from what they initially said at the beginning. Namely that for the priest and the Levite, their neighbor was the dying man. However, at the end, the neighbor became the Samaritan, “who drew near.”
“Jesus reverses the prospective,” he said, explaining that rather than sitting by and classifying who is a neighbor and who isn’t, “you can become the neighbor of anyone you meet in need, and you will be if in your heart you have compassion.”
The Pope closed his speech saying the parable is “a stupendous gift” and a commitment for all to take into consideration.
“We are all called to follow the same path of the Good Samaritan, who is the figure of Christ,” he said, adding that “Jesus bent down over us, became our servant, and in doing so saved us, so that also we can love one another as Jesus loved us. In the same way.”
Article Archive
Knowledge is empty unless it leads to love, Pope Francis says
Related Articles • More Articles
Adoration. / Thoom / Shutterstock.CNA Staff, Mar 28, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).Did you know that it is possible to sing a special song of adoration on Holy Thursday and have your soul purified?It's true, and the song is "Tantum Ergo."First, some background...A plenary indulgence is a grace granted by the Catholic Church through the merits of Jesus Christ to remove all temporal punishment due to sin.What does this mean?"An indulgence does not confer grace. An indulgence is not a remission of the guilt due to sin. The guilt due to sin is ordinarily taken away by the sacraments of baptism and penance (confession), in which we receive forgiveness for sins through Jesus Christ," the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) explains in this helpful Q&A."Although guilt is taken away, and with it the eternal penalty that is due to sin, namely, damnation, the eternal loss of the presence of God, there remain consequences for sins that those who have committed them ...
Asian elephant. / Credit: Filiz Elaerts / Unsplash (CC0)CNA Newsroom, Mar 27, 2024 / 13:00 pm (CNA).Despite repeated protests from Catholic bishops, wildlife attacks continue to pose a severe threat to the lives and properties of both Catholics and other residents in the Southern Indian state of Kerala. On Wednesday, local media reported significant damage from two elephants in Kerala's Idukki district, alongside a tiger's attack on livestock. This year alone, elephant attacks have resulted in 27 fatalities in the region. Video footage of a Catholic man trampled to death on Feb. 10 made headlines and sparked protests, only to be followed by news of a potential mauling by a tiger of a Catholic woman on her way to Mass four days after the fatal attack. Further fatal elephant tramplings followed the incident.The Catholic Church in Kerala has been leading the charge in urging the government to take decisive action to protect human lives. "The series of shocking ...
Catholic faithful offer prayers during an Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Mary's Basilica in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad in India on Feb. 14, 2024. / Credit: NOAH SEELAM/AFP via Getty ImagesBangalore, India, Mar 27, 2024 / 14:00 pm (CNA).A watchdog group that monitors violence committed against Christians in India has released a study documenting 161 such crimes in the first 75 days of 2024.These numbers may underestimate the number of crimes and acts of persecution committed against Christians in India, according to A.C. Michael, a Catholic and coordinator of the United Christian Forum (UCF), which released the report. "These figures are based only on the complaints registered on our toll-free helpline number (1-800-208-4545) to report incidents of anti-Christian violence. The actual numbers will be certainly much more," Michael told CNA on March 27."We feel frustrated that despite documenting and making public the shocking data regularly, there has been no re...