Jesus excludes no one

Jesus excluded no one. He built bridges, not walls. His message of salvation is addressed to everyone. This morning, Wednesday 8 May, during Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, Pope Francis reflected on the attitude of a good evangeliser: open to everyone, ready to listen to everyone, without exception.

Fortunately, he noted, “this is a good time in the life of the Church: these last fifty or sixty years have been a wonderful period. Because I remember when I was a child, you’d hear in Catholic families – in mine too – ‘No, we can’t go to their house because they’re not married in the Church, you know’. It was like a form of exclusion. ‘No, you couldn’t go there!’ Or because they’re socialists or atheists, we can’t go there. Nowadays, thank God, no, we don’t say that sort of thing any more.”

The example given by the Pope is that of the Apostle Paul, who, in the Areopagus (Acts of the Apostles 17:15, 22–18:1), proclaimed Jesus Christ amongst idol-worshippers. What matters, according to the Pope, is the way in which this is done: “He does not say: ‘Idolaters! You will go to hell…’”, but “he tries to touch their hearts”; he does not condemn them from the outset, but seeks dialogue: “Paul is a pontiff, a bridge-builder.” Paul is courageous, and “this makes us reflect on the attitude of a Christian.” A Christian must proclaim Jesus Christ in such a way that Jesus Christ is accepted and welcomed, not rejected. “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12–15)”.

The truth, therefore, “cannot be found in an encyclopaedia”; rather, it is the “encounter with the supreme truth: Jesus, the great truth. “No one is the master of the truth” and – as the Pope warned – the truth cannot be handled as it suits us; it cannot be exploited, “not even to defend oneself”.

The Church “does not grow through proselytism; Benedict XVI told us this, but she grows through attraction, through witness, through preaching”. Finally, “Paul acted in this way because he was certain, certain of Jesus Christ. He had no doubts about his Lord. Christians who are afraid to build bridges and prefer to put up walls are Christians who are not sure of their faith, who are not sure of Jesus Christ. And they ‘defend themselves’ by putting up walls.

Paul teaches what the path of evangelisation should be, to be followed with courage. And ‘when the Church loses this apostolic courage, she becomes a Church at a standstill. Well-organised, beautiful: that is all very well, but it bears no fruit, because it has lost the courage to go out to the peripheries, where there are so many people who are victims of idolatry, worldliness and weak thinking.” And if what is holding us back is the fear of making mistakes, we must remember that we can pick ourselves up and carry on moving forward. “Those who do not move forward for fear of making mistakes,” concluded Pope Francis, “are the ones who make the most serious mistakes.”

Source: News.va