Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Bringing Christ's love to the world
God calls all Christians to be saints – real people who make time for prayer and who show loving care for others in the simplest gestures, Pope Francis said in his new document on holiness.
“Do not be afraid of holiness. It will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy,” the Pope write in “Gaudete et Exsultate”, his apostolic exhortation on “the call to holiness in today’s world.” [Read more…]
False prophets who Pope Francis calls “snake charmers” and “charlatans” lead us astray. They mesmerize God’s children who then mistake true 
happiness for momentary pleasure ending in slavery to profit or become trapped in loneliness. Many young people enticed by other “swindlers” buy into the “panacea of drugs,” disposable relationships,” “dishonest gain,” or a “virtual” existence. Thus, people are robbed of “what is most precious: dignity, freedom and the ability to love,” he says.
After recognizing the false prophets to which each of us has fallen prey the question Pope Francis would like us to reflect on this Lent is: “What are the signs that indicate that our love is beginning to cool?” Above all else, he says, “what destroys charity is greed for money.” Rejection of God follows, and “we prefer our own desolation rather than the comfort found in his word and the sacraments.” As a result, even creation bears “silent witness” to hearts gone cold. Refuse litters the earth, the seas are polluted with the bodies of “countless shipwrecked victims of forces immigration,” and the heavens meant to sing God’s praises “are rent by engines raining down” instruments of death.
The Church offers us the Lenten practices of prayer, almsgiving and fasting which Pope Francis calls a “soothing remedy”. Prayer allows us to eradicate “secret lies” and “self-deception,” and we find the “consolation God offers,” he says. Almsgiving frees us from greed; it helps us regard others as brothers and sisters. “How I would like almsgiving to become a genuine style of life for each of us!” Fasting “weakens our tendency to violence” reviving “our desire to obey God,” who alone can satisfy our hunger.
The Pope reminds us that although the flame of charity may die in our hearts, it never dies in God’s. He invites us to participate in the “24 Hours for the Lord”, on Friday and Saturday, the 9th and 10th of March.
To learn more about the “24 Hours for the Lord” please visit: http://www.pcpne.va/content/pcpne/en.html
To read the full text of Pope Francis’ message: http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/02/06/180206c.html
by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
Family members bring up the offertory gifts as Pope Francis celebrates Mass marking the World Day of Migrants and Refugees in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Jan. 14. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) See POPE-MIGRANTS-MASS Jan. 14, 2018.
Being afraid and concerned about the impact of migration is not a sin, Pope Francis said, but it is a sin to let those fears lead to a refusal to help people in need.
“The sin is to allow these fears to determine our responses, to limit our choices, to compromise respect and generosity, to feed hostility and rejection,” the Pope said on January 14th, celebrating Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
While fear is a natural human reaction, he said, “the sin is to refuse to encounter the other, the different, the neighbor, when this is in fact a privileged opportunity to encounter the Lord.”
According to the United Nations, an estimated 258 million people are living outside the country of their birth. The number includes 26 million refugees and asylum seekers, who were forced to flee their homelands because of war or persecution.
“His invitation ‘Come and see!’ is addressed today to all of us, to local communities and to new arrivals,” the Pope said. “It is an invitation to overcome our fears so as to encounter the other, to welcome, to know and to acknowledge him or her.”
For the migrants and refugees, he said, that includes learning about and respecting the laws and customs of their host countries. “It even includes understanding their fears and apprehensions for the future,” he added.
For people in the host countries, he said, it means welcoming newcomers, opening oneself “without prejudices to their rich diversity,” understanding their hopes, fears and vulnerabilities and recognizing their potential.
‘In the true encounter with the neighbor, are we capable of recognizing Jesus Christ who is asking to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated?” Pope Francis asked.
“It is not easy to enter into another culture, to put oneself in the shoes of people so different from us, to understand their thoughts and their experiences,” the pope said. That is one reason why “we often refuse to encounter the other and raise barriers to defend ourselves.”
People in host countries may be afraid that newcomers “will disturb the established order (or) will ‘steal’ something they have long labored to build up,” he said. And the newcomers have their own fears “of confrontation, judgment, discrimination, failure.”
Both set of fears, the pope said, “are legitimate, based on doubts that are fully comprehensible from a human point of view.”
Sin, he said, enters the equation only when people refuse to try to understand, to welcome, to see Jesus present in the other, especially “the poor, the rejected, the refugee, the asylum seeker.”
~ Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
From Vatican Radio by Sean-Patrick Lovett
Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini is an Italian-born saint who dedicated her life to helping thousands of immigrants living in the United States in the late 19th century. She died in Chicago exactly one hundred years ago. [December 22, 1917]
On Saturday morning in the Vatican, Pope Francis met members of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The congregation is present today on 6 continents and 15 countries throughout the world.
During his discourse in Italian, the Pope recalled the holiness of their Foundress and praised her tireless work with migrants and the poor. He held her up as an example for today, adding that the reality of migrants has evolved and is now “more current than ever”. Migrants, said the Pope, “need good laws, programs of development and organization, but, above all, they always need love, friendship, human closeness; they need to be heard, looked in the eye and accompanied.” They need God, he said, “encountered in love that is freely given”. We must do as Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini does, concluded Pope Francis: “be capable of responding to the signs of our time, reading them in the signs of our time. Reading them in the light of the Word of God and living them in such a way as to provide an answer that can reach the heart of every person.
To read the English translation of the Pope’s address: http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/12/09/pope_meets_sisters_of_congregation_founded_by_mother_cabrini/1353887
