There are many Christians «in words», but the true holiness is to realize the message of Christ, Pope Francis said October 25, 2018, at the morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican. He gave two ways to know Christ.
Who is Christ for you? he asked in his homily reported by Vatican News. It is easy to answer by reciting the Creed, said the pope, but the personal question «puts us a little embarrassed» because we must go to the «heart».
Saint Paul, he continued quoting the first reading, did not know Jesus «by starting theology studies»: «What Paul felt, he wants us Christians to feel. To the question, we can ask Paul – «who is Christ for you?» – he will give his own simple experience: «he loved me and gave himself for me». But he is involved with Christ who has paid for him … Paul wants Christians … to enter this experience so that everyone can say: «He loved me and gave himself for me». »
“The first step in knowing Christ,” Pope Francis emphasized, lies precisely in recognizing that we are sinners. He said that in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we confess our sin – but, he noted, “it is one thing to tell our sins,” and another to recognize ourselves as sinners, capable of doing anything.” St Paul “had this experience of his own wretchedness,” and recognised that he needed to be redeemed, recognised that he needed someone who “would pay for his right to call himself a ‘son of God’”: “We are all sinners, but to say it, to feel it, we need the sacrifice of Christ.”
The second step advised by the Pope: contemplation. «A saint said this beautiful prayer: ‘Lord, that I know you and know myself’: to know oneself and to know Jesus … not to be content to say three or four words about Jesus», because «to know Jesus is an adventure, but a serious adventure, not a teenage adventure. »
«St. Paul says,» He has the power to do infinitely more than we can ask or even conceive … But we must ask. «Lord, that I know you; that when I speak of you, I do not say words of parrot, that I say words born of my experience «. Christians in words, there are many. We are sometimes too. It is not holiness; holiness is to be Christians who realize in life what Jesus taught, «insisted the pope.
In conclusion, he summed up the ways to know Jesus: «The first step, to know oneself: sinners; sinners. Without this knowledge and without this inner confession, that I am a sinner, we can not move forward. The second step, the prayer to the Lord, that he may make known to us by his power this mystery of Jesus who is the fire he brought to the Earth. It will be a beautiful habit if every day, at certain times, we can say: «Lord, that I know you and that I know myself». «
