Commentary on the Gospel of
Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium gave us a diagnosis of our situation: there is a lack of joy because there is an abundance of commodity. A window opening in the people of God is needed. ‘I want a missionary Church’, he told us to sum up. Most of the experts in spiritual life agree with the Pope: that is why there is a lack of experience of God.
We are today invited to remember our deepest identity: sent by God to humanize humankind, with the poor and our enemies at the heart of the missionary sent. This is the encounter that will help us to pronounce Job’s words: ‘I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you’, to feel Jesus’ joy of the Holy Spirit made known to the little ones, to read, them, that all our names are written in heaven freely, as God is.
Let us get out, let us frequent peripheries, let us give our best for poor and enemies. ‘Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction’ (Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est 1). It is in the Cross where we can see the real face of God.
