Pope Francis has urged Christians to be an example to others of how to live a sober, non-materialistic lifestyle in peace with one’s community. Source: CNA.
“It is important to know how to guard sobriety, to know how to be sober in the use of things – sharing resources, skills, and gifts, and doing without excess. Why? To be free: Excess enslaves you,” the Pope said in his Angelus address yesterday.
The Pope addressed the problems of materialism in his comments before praying the Angelus, a Marian prayer he leads every week on Sundays.
Speaking from a window overlooking St Peter’s Square, he reflected on the Sunday Gospel, from Mark 6, focusing on Jesus’ instructions to his apostles to “take nothing for the journey” as he sent them forth to preach.
“Let’s pause for a moment on this image,” he said. “The disciples are sent together, and they are to take only what is necessary with them.”
Pope Francis invited those present to reflect on “what happens in our families or communities when we make do with what is necessary, even with little …”
“Indeed, a family or a community that lives in this way creates around it an environment rich in love, in which it is easier to open oneself to faith and the newness of the Gospel, and from which one leaves better, one leaves more serene,” he said.
“If, on the other hand,” he pointed out, “everyone goes his or her own way, if what counts are only things – which are never enough – if we do not listen to each other, if individualism and envy prevail … the air becomes heavy, life difficult, and encounters become more an occasion of restlessness, sadness, and discouragement, than an occasion for joy.”
“Envy is a deadly thing, a poison,” the Pope added, while noting that “communion, harmony among us, and sobriety are important values, indispensable values, for a Church to be missionary at all levels.”
FULL STORY
‘Excess enslaves you,’ Pope Francis warns Christians (By Hannah Brockhaus, CNA)
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