Posted on 09/22/2015 7:44:18 AM PDT by Salvation
CREDIT: Jaclyn Lippelmann, The Catholic Standard
On Thursday morning, Pope Francis will speak at a joint session of Congress. Shortly thereafter he will journey to a nearby center of Catholic Charities. In so doing, he will be meeting very different groups of people: politicians, and the poor, legislators and the less fortunate.
There is in these visits a powerful contrast. But not all things are as they appear for not as man sees does God see. Let’s consider both.
The day will begin in the well of the U.S. Congress. This will be the first time that a pope has addressed a joint session of Congress. He does so as a religious and moral leader, but also as a head of state. In fact, many of the honors the pope has been accorded, including arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, an official welcome, and Secret Service protection are due to his status as the head of state of the Vatican City State, the smallest internationally recognized state in the world.
But do not miss the stunning image here: a pope addressing Congress. Such a thing would have been unthinkable before the 1960s. Catholics were generally considered with suspicion by the Protestant majority in the United State. They wondered if our loyalties were here or with the Vatican. Wave after wave of Catholic immigrants in the early 20th century also created fear in the minds of many Americans. These Catholics immigrants were poor and brought with them many of the social ills associated with poverty. Thus, anti-Catholic sentiment ran deep before the 1960s. And despite Catholics gaining local power in many northeastern cities, it was generally difficult for Catholics to be elected to national office. In those times, people who talked about the important of the “separation of Church and State” usually had Catholics in mind.
Much of the severity of sectarian hostility has waned, even as secular hostility against the Church has risen. But most people who lived before 1960 could never have imagined a pope addressing a joint session of Congress or receiving the sorts of state-sponsored honors you have seen; it would have been politically impossible.
Yet note a further paradox! In many minds, this address of the pope to Congress is one to arguably the most powerful body on this planet. The men and women gathered there sit atop billion dollar budgets and make decisions that affect the entire world, let alone the United States. The fate and well-being of many depends on them.
But not all things are as they appear. For that body of individuals is likely the second most important group the pope will address on Thursday. The most important and influential group awaits him at his next stop: the poor at Catholic Charities.
Please be assured that I do not make this observation with the common class hatred/envy that simplistically concludes that all rich and powerful people are evil and greedy while all the poor are good and holy. Things are never that black and white. There are sinners and saints in each group.
But understand this: the poor, the suffering, and the vulnerable are far more powerful than most of us imagine. Consider that while the poor need us in this life, we are going to them in the next. The Lord Jesus counseled us, I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings (Lk 16:9). In other words, if we are generous to the poor here, they are going to be powerful advocates for us on our judgment day.
Mother Mary, too, spoke of a great reversal that is coming: he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty (Lk 1:52-53). And Jesus added, But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first (Matt 19:30). And Psalm 72 says, The Lord hears the cry of the poor (Ps 72).
It seems that many of us here are going to have to make an appointment to be able to see them in Heaven! Many who are poor, suffering, and vulnerable now are going to have the highest places in Heaven, and they’re going have a lot to say about our final judgment. It’s not bad advice to befriend them now because we’re going to need them later!
So which is the most powerful group the pope will address on Thursday? Well, you decide. But remember, things are not always as they appear; God does not see as man sees.
Maybe Pope Francis was hearing Fidel’s confession, since he has a LOT to confess over the course of his life.
He should have called out the Castros on their brutal oppression of Cuba for decades. Instead he gave license to it.
Why is Mexico held to no standards? They shoot people at their border, murder their own people, have the most evil drug cartels on the face of the planet and NOBODY CARES.
BTW, his name is Pope Francis. Why do you not use the correct title?
Could be, but not necessarily.
Or maybe he was assuring El Maximo that he'd use his influence to further spread socialism during his visit to the U.S.
.....Or maybe before he leaves was told to realize that the USA is falling head over heals in love with the Donald.
“Or maybe before he leaves was told to realize that the USA is falling head over heals in love with the Donald.”
Or probably not.
**He is a true Jesuit.**
I’ve come in contact with Jesuits, and I don’t see that. They will always make you think.
That’s why a lot of people are confused. They aren’t thinking.
Previous Popes have spoken in this square in Cuba.
The Pope is to Catholics what Obama is to the USA.
Yes, they make for quite the optics, don't they?
And he gave a book that one of Fidel’s former Catholic teachers had written to him.
The Pope has a sly sense of humor.
Including if my memory serves me correct, St. John Paul II the Great.
Some analysts have pointed out how Pope Francis addressed the spiritual and not the political.
I pray he does the same in the United States.
I see a lot in common with that of another well known Marxist and liberation theology person from Argentina.
I pray that he sticks with the spiritual and avoids the political. Rightly or wrongly he comes across to me has a hardcore Leftist. I don’t like all the schmoozing with the Castro brothers. I don’t like his pronouncements on immigration or economic policy and globull warming. Perhaps a lot is getting lost in translation.
By far the vast majority of the "poor" that I am aware of are unrepentant enemies of God, so I'm pretty sure I don't want to be welcomed to their eternal dwellings. The concept of the poor as suffering innocents who simply can't find work is an utter fabrication in this country, and the "poor" in many other countries are enemies of God (false god worshippers). So how does this work exactly?
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