Christians “sometimes make mistakes, but they correct themselves; they fall sometimes, but they get up again. They also sin sometimes, but they repent; they are always turned “towards the exterior,” stressed Pope Francis during the morning Mass, on October 19, 2018, at Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican.
There is a “bad” leaven that “ruins,” noted the Holy Father, in his homily, reported by “Vatican News.” “The hypocrisy’ of people who are “closed-in on themselves, who think of what appears, who pretend to give alms and then ‘blow the trumpet’ to make it known.” Their preoccupation is to protect their “egoism,” their “security”: “when something puts them in difficulty,” they “look elsewhere,” according to their “internal laws.”
“This leaven is dangerous . . . Jesus doesn’t tolerate hypocrisy, continued the Pontiff. “On the outside, you are beautiful as the sepulchers, but inside there is putrefaction or destruction, there are defilements . . . it’s a leaven that makes one grow without a future, because in egoism, in introspection, there is no future, there is no future.” Jesus then says: “Beware.”
The good leaven is turned toward “the exterior,” explained the Pontiff. Christians “make mistakes sometimes, but they correct themselves; they fall sometimes, but they get up again. They also sin sometimes, but they repent – but they are always towards the exterior, towards that heritage, because it has been promised. And these people are always joyful because a very great happiness has been promised to them: that they will be the glory, the praise of God.”
Pope Francis encouraged all to be “always on the way, with the leaven of the Holy Spirit who never makes one grow toward the interior . . . as the hypocrites.” The Holy Spirit “pushes one towards the exterior,” “towards the horizon.” And, despite the “difficulties, the sufferings, the problems, the falls, Christians hope “to find” the promised “heritage.”
To sum up by way of conclusion: one must choose between being “led by one’s egoism,” grow “towards the interior,” be preoccupied “only to appear balanced, well: that one’s bad habits not be seen” or be “Christians.” “The leaven of Christians is the Holy Spirit, who pushes us outside, makes us grow, with all the difficulties of the way, with all sins also, but always with hope . . . People who have the Holy Spirit as leaven are joyful, even in problems and in difficulties. Hypocrites have forgotten what it is to be joyful.”
