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Illustration:Paolo Veronese, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (c. 1560)
Pope Francis’ Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia
Hall of Benediction – Saturday, 21 December 2024
The title of this address is
“Bless and do not curse them”
Dear brothers and sisters!
The title of this address is “Bless and do not curse”.
The Roman Curia is made up of many working communities, more or less complex or numerous.
This year, when I was thinking about a reflection that could benefit the communal life of the Curia and its various offices, I chose an aspect that fits in well with the mystery of the Incarnation, and you will immediately see why.
I thought about speaking well of others and not speaking badly of them.
This is something that concerns all of us, including the Pope – bishops, priests, consecrated persons and the laity. We are all equal in this regard, Why? Because it is part of our being human.
To speak well and not ill of one another is an expression of humility, and humility is the hallmark of the Incarnation and especially of the mystery of the Nativity which we are about to celebrate.
An ecclesial community lives in joyful and fraternal harmony to the extent that its members follow the path of humility, refusing to think and speak ill of one another.
Saint Paul, writing to the community of Rome, says, “Bless and do not curse them” (Rom 12:14).
We can also understand his words as meaning: “Speak well and do not speak ill” of others, in our case, our co-workers, our superiors and colleagues, everyone. Speak well and do not speak ill.
The path to humility: self-accusation
I would like to propose today, as I did some twenty years ago at a diocesan meeting in Buenos Aires, that we all learn, as a way of exercising humility, the practice of self-accusation, as taught by the ancient spiritual masters, especially Dorotheus of Gaza.
Yes, Gaza, the very place that is now synonymous with death and destruction, is a quite ancient city, where monasteries and outstanding saints and teachers flourished in the early centuries of Christianity.
Dorotheus was one of them.
Following in the footsteps of great Fathers, such as Basil and Evagrius, he built up the Church through his writings and his letters, which are rich in evangelical wisdom.
Even today, by reflecting on his teachings, we can learn humility through self-accusation, so as not to speak ill of our neighbor.
Sometimes, in everyday speech, when someone makes a critical comment, another person will think: “Look who’s talking!”. That is in everyday speech.
In one of his “Instructions”, Dorotheus says, “When an evil befalls a humble man, he immediately looks inward and judges that he has deserved it. Nor does he allow himself to reproach or blame others.
He simply endures the hardship, without fuss, without anguish, and in all tranquility.
Humility troubles neither him nor anyone else” (Dorotheus of Gaza, Oeuvres spirituelles, Paris 1963, No. 30).
And again: “Do not try to know your neighbor’s faults or harbor suspicions against him.
If our own malice gives rise to such suspicions, try to transform them into good thoughts” (ibid., No. 187).
Self-accusation is only a means, but it is an essential one.
It is the basis for saying “no”’ to individualism and “yes” to the ecclesial spirit of community.
Whoever practices the virtue of self-denial and do so consistently is gradually freed from suspicion and mistrust, and makes room for God, who alone can unite hearts.
If everyone progresses along this path, a community can be born and grow, one in which all are guardians of one another and walk together in humility and charity.
If we see a fault in someone, we should only talk about it with three others: with God, with the person in question, or, if that is not possible, with the person in the community who can take care of the situation. No one else.
What is the basis of this spiritual “style” of self-accusation?
It is an inner humility or “condescension” of the Word of God.
A humble heart humbles itself, like the heart of Jesus, whom we contemplate these days in a manger.
Faced with the tragedy of a world so often in the grip of evil, what does God do?
Does he rise up in all his righteousness and hurl condemnations from on high?
In a way this is what the prophets expected, even to the time of John the Baptist.
But God is God; his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways (cf. Is 55:8).
God’s holiness, as divine, is paradoxical in our eyes.
The Most High chooses to humble himself, to become little, like a mustard seed, like the seed of a man in a woman’s womb.
Invisible. In this way, he begins to take upon himself the enormous, unbearable burden of the sin of the world.
God’s condescension is reflected by our practice of self-accusation, which is not primarily a moral act of our own, but a theological reality – as is always the case in the Christian life.
It is a gift from God, the work of the Holy Spirit, which it is up to us to accept, to “condescend” and to be ready to welcome this gift into our hearts.
This is what the Virgin Mary did.
She had no reason to reproach herself, yet she freely chose to cooperate fully with God’s condescension, with the humiliation of the Son and the descent of the Holy Spirit.
In this sense, humility might well be called a theological virtue.
To help us humble ourselves, we can go to the sacrament of reconciliation.
This will help us. Each of us can ask: when was the last time I went to confession?
In passing, I would like to mention something else. I have spoken a few times about gossip.
It is an evil that destroys social life, makes people’s hearts sick and leads to nothing.
People say it very well: “Gossip is useless”. Be careful about it
Blessed ourselves, let us bless others in turn
Dear brothers and sisters, the Incarnation of the Word shows us that God has not condemned us but blessed us.
It also shows that in God there is no condemnation, but only and always blessing.
Here we can think of certain passages of the Letters of Saint Catherine of Siena, such as this: “It seems that [God] does not wish to remember our offences, or to condemn us to eternal damnation, but to show us constant mercy” (Letters, No. 15). And we need to talk about mercy!
Above all, however, we can think of St. Paul and the magnificent first words of the hymn that opens the Letter to the Ephesians:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3).
Here we find the origin of our ability to “bless” others: precisely because we ourselves have been blessed, we can bless others.
We must all plunge into the depths of this mystery; otherwise we risk drying up and becoming like those empty, dried-up canals that no longer contain even a drop of water.
Here in the Curia, office work is itself often arid and, in the long run, can make us dry unless we refresh ourselves through pastoral work, moments of encounter, friendships, in a spirit of openness and generosity.
With regard to pastoral experiences, I ask young people in particular if they have any pastoral experience, this is very important. For this to happen, we need, more than anything else, to make the Spiritual Exercises each year: to immerse ourselves in God’s grace, to be totally immersed in and drenched by the Holy Spirit in those floods of life-giving water whereby each of us has been willed and loved “from the beginning”.
If our hearts are embraced by that primordial blessing, then we will be able to bless everyone, even those for whom we do not care or those who have treated us badly.
This is the case: we are to bless even those who are unfriendly.
The model to which we should look is, as always, the Virgin Mary, our Mother.
Mary is, par excellence, the one who is Blessed.
That is how Elizabeth greets her at the Visitation: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Lk 1:42).
That is how we too address her in the “Hail Mary”.
Our Lady brought us the “spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph 1:3 –Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,) that was certainly present “in the heavens” before all time, but also, “in the fullness of time”, present on earth, in human history, when the Incarnate Word became man (cf. Gal 4:4). Christ is that blessing.
He is the fruit that blesses the womb; the Son who blesses the Mother.
The Virgin Mary can rightly be addressed, in Dante’s words, as “the daughter of your Son… humble and lofty more than a creature”. Mary, as Blessed, brought to the world the Blessing that is Jesus.
There is a painting, which I have in my study, of the synkatábasis. (literally “going down together with)“
There is Our Lady with her hands like a small ladder, and the Child is descending the ladder.
The Child has the Law in one hand and with the other he is holding onto his mother so as not to fall.
That is Our Lady’s role: to carry the Child. And this is what she does in our hearts.
Artisans of blessing
Sisters and brothers, as we look to Mary, image and model of the Church, we are led to reflect on the ecclesial dimension of this blessing.
Here I would summarize it in this way: in the Church, sign and instrument of God’s blessing for humanity, all of us are called to become artisans of blessing.
Not just those who give blessings, but artisans who teach, living as artisans to bless others.
We can think of the Church as a great river that branches off into a thousand and one streams, torrents, rivulets – a bit like the Amazon basin – to water the entire earth with God’s blessing, flowing from the Paschal Mystery of Christ.
The Church thus appears to us as the fulfilment of the plan that God revealed to Abraham from the moment he first called him to leave the land of his fathers.
The Lord said to him, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you… and in you shall all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2-3).
This plan dominates the entire economy of God’s covenant with his people, a people “chosen” not in an exclusive sense, but in the sense that we, as Catholics, would call “sacramental”.
In a word, by bringing the gift of that blessing to everyone through our example, our witness, our generosity and our forbearance.
In the mystery of the Incarnation, then, God has blessed every man and woman who comes into this world, not with a decree that rains down from heaven, but through the flesh of Jesus, the blessed Lamb born of blessed Mary (cf. Saint Anselm, Or. 52).
I like to think of the Roman Curia as a great workshop in which there are any number of different jobs, but where everyone works for the same purpose: to bless others, and to spread the blessing of God and Mother Church in the world.
Here I think in particular of the hidden work carried out by the office staff – the minutanti, some of whom I see here, they are very good, thank you! – who prepare letters assuring someone who is ill or imprisoned, a mother, father or child, an elderly person, and so many others, that the Pope is praying for them and that he sends his blessing. Thank you for this, because I sign these letters.
Is that not to serve as an artisan of blessing? Minutanti are real artisans of blessing.
They tell me that a saintly priest who worked years ago in the Secretariat of State had attached to the back of the door of his office a piece of paper that read: “My work is humble, humbled and humiliating”. Perhaps this was a negative way of seeing things, but not without a grain of truth and healthy realism. To me, it can be read in a positive way, as conveying the typical style of the “artisans” of the Curia: humility as a means of spreading “blessings”.
It is the way of God himself, who in Jesus condescends to share in our human condition and thus gives us his blessing. And I can testify to this: on my recent Encyclical, on the Sacred Heart, which Cardinal Re mentioned, how many people worked! Very many! The drafts went back and forth… Many of them, with small things.
Dear friends, it is reassuring to think that through our daily work, especially that which is hidden, each of us can help bring God’s blessing into the world. Yet in this, we must be consistent: we cannot write blessings and then go on to ruin them by speaking ill of our brother or sister.
So this is my wish: may the Lord, born for us in humility, help us always to be women and men of blessing.
A happy Christmas to all!
