"Love alone gives meaning and ..." Pope Francis

[MariaChristi]

“Love alone gives meaning and happiness to life”: this is the “golden rule” of human life, said Pope Francis before the Angelus, this Sunday Septembre 3, 2017, before praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square…

…Jesus reminds us that His way is the way of love, and there is no true love without the sacrifice of oneself. We are called not to allow ourselves to be absorbed by the vision of this world, but to be ever more aware of the need and effort for us Christians to walk counter-current and uphill.

Jesus completes His proposal with words that express a great wisdom that is always valid, because they challenge the egocentric mentality and behaviour. He exhorts: “For whoever will save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (v. 25). Contained in this paradox is the Golden Rule that God has inscribed in human nature created in Christ: the rule that love alone gives meaning and happiness to life. To spend one’s talents, one’s energies and one’s time only to save, protect and fulfil oneself leads in reality to lose oneself, that is, to a sad and sterile existence. If, instead, we live for the Lord and we organize our life on love, as Jesus did, we will be able to savour genuine joy, and our life won’t be sterile, it will be fruitful.

In the celebration of the Eucharist we relive the mystery of the cross; not only do we remember but we carry out the memorial of the redeeming Sacrifice, in which the Son of God loses Himself completely to receive Himself again from the Father and thus find us again, who were lost, together with all creatures. Every time we take part in Holy Mass, the Love of the crucified and risen Christ is communicated to us as food and drink, so that we can follow Him on the way every day, in the concrete service of brothers.

May Mary Most Holy, who followed Jesus to Calvary, accompany us also and help us not to be afraid of the cross, but nailed with Jesus; not a cross without Jesus, but a cross with Jesus, namely, the cross to suffer for love of God and of brothers, because this suffering, by the grace of Christ, is fruitful resurrection.

Full text may be read HERE