Pope Francis speaks to pilgrims during his Wednesday General Audience on April 23, 2014 Credit: Kyle Burkhart/CNA
Posted on 05/15/2014 2:15:20 PM PDT by NYer
.- Pope Francis reflected in his daily Mass on how the apostles evangelized by first telling the history of God’s people, explaining that it’s impossible to understand a Christian without this association.
“You cannot understand a Christian outside of the people of God. The Christian is not a monad,” but “belongs to a people: the Church,” the Pope observed in his May 15 homily.
“A Christian without a church is something purely idealistic, it is not real.”
Beginning by looking to the first reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, the Roman Pontiff addressed those gathered in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse by recalling how when Paul preached in Antioch, he did so by first recounting the whole of Israel’s salvation history.
“Jesus does not make sense without this history” because he “is the end of this story, (the end) toward which this story goes, toward which it walks,” he noted, so “you cannot understand a Christian outside of the people of God.”
“You cannot understand a Christian alone, just like you cannot understand Jesus Christ alone” the Pope went on to say, explaining that “Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us.”
“No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history.”
Pope Francis then described how a Christian without a history, a nation or the Church “is incomprehensible,” saying that it’s “a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life.”
Drawing attention to the importance of remembering this “dimension of history,” the Bishop of Rome observed that a Christian is “a living memory of his people’s journey, he is the living memory of his Church.”
“Then, where is this people going? Toward the ultimate promise. It is a people walking toward fullness; a chosen people which has a promise for the future and walks toward this promise, toward the fulfillment of this promise.”
In order to do this Christians within the Church must be men and women “with hope: hope in the promise,” the Pope went on, noting that “It is not expectation: no, no! That’s something else: It is hope.”
“Right, on we go! (Toward) that which does not disappoint.”
Explaining how a Christian is also someone who remembers, the pontiff encouraged all present to “seek the grace of memory, always” so that by doing so and also looking forward with hope they might be a Christian who “follows the path of God and renews the covenant with God.”
This type of Christian constantly tells the Lord “Yes, I want the commandments, I want your will, I will follow you” he continued, adding that “He is a man of the covenant, and we celebrate the covenant, every day” in the Mass, therefore a Christian is “a woman, a man of the Eucharist.”
Concluding his reflections, Pope Francis encouraged all present to “think about our Christian identity,” stating that “Our Christian identity is belonging to a people: the Church.”
“Without this, we are not Christians” he observed, noting how “we entered the Church through baptism: there we are Christians.”
“For this reason, we should be in the habit of asking for the grace of memory, the memory of the journey that the people of God has made,” the pontiff said, and “also of personal memory: What God did for me, in my life, how has he made me walk…”
Praying, the Roman Pontiff asked “for the grace of hope, which is not optimism: no, no! It's something else,” and asked “for the grace to renew the covenant with the Lord who has called us every day.”
“May the Lord give us these three graces, which are necessary for the Christian identity.”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
AMEN!
Another good, ol’ Hoosier boy!
At what point in his life?
Possibly; but the QUESTION was about CHRISTIAN...
Finally took the bait; didn't you!
How many of them in FW do NOT post on FR???
I know how you feel. My sisters and I took turns caring for our mother during the last 2 years of her life. Due to a series of ministrokes, she had become like a small child, a very sweet small child, who needed to be groomed and dressed.
Caring for her became a blessing instead of a burden, as it became a bonding time, a time for me to return, in small measure, some of the nurturing she had given to me over the years. And my mother had been a very, very devoted mother to her nine children.
It was 7 years ago, May 1, that she passed on to her reward. She would have turned 95 that June. Miss her very much.
May our Blessed Lord watch over you and your mother.
Let's try some easy math:
There are approximately 1.2 billion Catholics world wide;
If merely 1% of them 'ask' Mary for help just once each day;
that means that 12 million separate prayers are headed Mary's direction every day.
Given that there are 86,400 seconds per day... (24 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds)
...that means that Mary has to handle approximately 139 'requests' per second!
Purty good fer someone NOT 'devine'!
He was always an atheist....he used religion as a way to sell Marxism.
I was just going to post the exact same thing but I figured that I'd read a little further down and see is someone had already addressed it. These little old ladies certainly know Jesus! I'm sure they miss going to church but I would never presume that they are lost souls.....
Like my old geometry teacher used to say: "Some things are given..."
Notice, it doesn't mention any "church building" or formal religion!!!
Awesome questions. That is the exact attitude that drove me away from the Roman Catholic Church.
Origen
"If someone from this people wants to be saved, let him come into this house so that he may be able to attain his salvation. . . . Let no one, then, be persuaded otherwise, nor let anyone deceive himself: Outside of this house, that is, outside of the Church, no one is saved; for, if anyone should go out of it, he is guilty of his own death" (Homilies on Joshua 3:5 [A.D. 250]).
Cyprian of Carthage
Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress [a schismatic church] is separated from the promises of the Church, nor will he that forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is an alien, a worldling, and an enemy. He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother" (The Unity of the Catholic Church 6, 1st ed. [A.D. 251]).
"Let them not think that the way of life or salvation exists for them, if they have refused to obey the bishops and priests, since the Lord says in the book of Deuteronomy: ‘And any man who has the insolence to refuse to listen to the priest or judge, whoever he may be in those days, that man shall die’ [Deut. 17:12]. And then, indeed, they were killed with the sword . . . but now the proud and insolent are killed with the sword of the Spirit, when they are cast out from the Church. For they cannot live outside, since there is only one house of God, and there can be no salvation for anyone except in the Church" (Letters 61[4]:4 [A.D. 253]).
Lactantius
"It is, therefore, the Catholic Church alone which retains true worship. This is the fountain of truth; this, the domicile of faith; this, the temple of God. Whoever does not enter there or whoever does not go out from there, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. . . . Because, however, all the various groups of heretics are confident that they are the Christians and think that theirs is the Catholic Church, let it be known that this is the true Church, in which there is confession and penance and which takes a health-promoting care of the sins and wounds to which the weak flesh is subject" (Divine Institutes 4:30:11–13 [A.D. 307]).
Jerome
"Heretics bring sentence upon themselves since they by their own choice withdraw from the Church, a withdrawal which, since they are aware of it, constitutes damnation. Between heresy and schism there is this difference: that heresy involves perverse doctrine, while schism separates one from the Church on account of disagreement with the bishop. Nevertheless, there is no schism which does not trump up a heresy to justify its departure from the Church" (Commentary on Titus 3:10–11 [A.D. 386]).
An erroneous extrapolation of the following...
Hebrews 10:23-25
Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:
Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
If this had only been the case for the last 2000 years...
Sigh...
You cannot be a Christian without being a believer.
And you KNOW this how?
His early years in Indianapolis did not reveal this.
Kindly show me the exact verse in the Bible that says that a Priest is the necessary conduit to Christ.
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