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May Christians close the doors to jealousies and to the gossip that divides and destroys our communities: this is the exhortation delivered by Pope Francis this Thursday morning, during the Mass celebrated in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta, on the sixth day of prayer for the unity of Christians. The Pope’s reflection was drawn from the day’s first Reading, which speaks of the Israelites’ victory over the Philistines thanks to the courage of the young David. The joy of victory quickly turns into sadness and jealousy for King Saul in the face of the women who praise David for having killed Goliath.
So “this great victory,” affirms Pope Francis, “begins to become a defeat in the king’s heart ” where it creeps in, as happens with Cain, the “worm of jealousy and envy.” And like Cain with Abel, the king decides to kill David. “This is what jealousy creates in our hearts,” the Pope stresses, “it is a wicked unease, which cannot in any way tolerate that a brother or a sister should have something that I do not have .” Saul, “instead of praising God, as the women of Israel did, for this victory, prefers to shut himself in on himself,” “to grieve” and “to stew his feelings in the broth of bitterness ”:
“Jealousy leads to murder. Envy leads to murder. It is this door, the door of envy, through which the devil entered the world. The Bible says: ‘By the envy of the devil, evil entered the world.’ Jealousy and envy open the doors to all evil things. And this divides the community. A Christian community, when some of its members suffer from envy, from jealousy, ends up being divided: one against the other. It is a very powerful poison. A poison that we find in the first pages of the Bible with Cain.”
Jealousy engenders bitterness
In the heart of a person struck by jealousy and envy – the Pope further stresses – two very clear things happen. The first thing is bitterness:
“The envious person, the jealous person, is a bitter person: he does not know how to sing, nor how to praise, he does not know what joy is, since he looks at what the other person has and that he does not have. This attitude creates a bitterness, a bitterness that spreads over the whole community. These people sow bitterness. And the second attitude that jealousy and envy engender is gossip. Because this person cannot bear that another should have this or that thing, so the solution is to bring the other down. By what means? Gossip, slander. If you look, you will see that behind gossip you always find jealousy and envy. And this divides the community, destroys it. These are the weapons of the devil.”
Whoever hates his brother is a murderer
“So many Christian communities ,” the Pope added, were doing well, but then in some of their members entered the worm of jealousy and envy, and with it, sadness, resentment of hearts, and gossip. “A person who is under the influence of envy and jealousy kills ,” as the apostle John says: "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” And “the envious one, the jealous one, begins by hating his brother.”
The Pope concluded: “ Today, during this Mass, let us pray for our Christian communities, that this seed of jealousy may not be sown among us, that envy may not take hold in our hearts, in the heart of our communities, and that we may go forward praising the Lord, in joy. It is an immense grace, this grace of not falling into sadness, into jealousy and envy”
Source: News.va
