Pope: Let's ask ourselves every day if it is the Lord who dictates our decisions
“Before the day is over, take two or three minutes [to ask yourself] what important thing happened inside me today? If I had a little hate here and talked behind someone’s back there. Did I do something charitable? . . . Who helped you do these things, both bad and good?” Let us “ask ourselves these questions to know what happens inside us.”
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Every day let's take a little time to ask ourselves if our decisions come “from the Lord” or are dictated by our “selfishness” or “the devil”, said Pope Francis in his homily during the Mass he celebrated this morning at Casa Santa Marta, inspired by the First Reading, from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans (Rom 7:18-25).
Someone, the pontiff observed, might ask himself whether, by doing “evil he does not want", Saint Paul is “in hell” or “defeated”; in reality, "he is a saint" because "even saints feel this war within themselves”. This is “a law for all” and “an everyday war”.
"It is a struggle between good and evil, but not [between] an abstract good and an abstract evil: between the good that the Holy Spirit inspires us to do and the evil that the bad spirit inspires us to do. It's a struggle. It is a struggle of all of us. If any of us said: ‘But I do not feel this, I am a blessed, I live peaceably, at peace, I do not feel ...,’ I would say: ‘You are not blessed: you are numb, someone who does not understand what is happening’.”
In this daily struggle, today we “win” one, tomorrow there will be “another” and the day after tomorrow another one, “until the end”, like the martyrs, who “had to fight until the end to keep the faith” and the Saints, like Teresina of the Child Jesus, whose “hardest fight was the final moment”, on her deathbed because she felt "the bad spirit" wanted to take her away from the Lord.
There are “extraordinary moments of struggle” but also “ordinary, everyday moments”. So “Many times we Christians are busy with many things, even good ones; but what happens inside you? Who inspired you to do this?”
The struggle, reiterated Francis, "is always between grace and sin, between the Lord who wants to save us and pull us away of this temptation and the bad spirit that always pushes us down", to “defeat us”. Therefore, we must ask ourselves if each of us is "a street person who comes and goes without realising what is happening” or not. Likewise, we must ask if our decisions come "from the Lord" or are dictated by our own “selfishness” and/or “the devil”.
"It is important to know what is happening inside of us. It is important to live a little inside, and not let our soul be a road where everyone goes. ‘How do you do this, Father?’ Before the day is over, take two or three minutes [to ask yourself] what important thing happened inside me today? If I had a little hate here and talked behind someone’s back there. Did I do something charitable? . . . Who helped you do these things, both bad and good?” Let us “ask ourselves these questions to know what happens inside us.”
“Sometimes, with that chatty soul that we all have, we know what happens in the neighbourhood, what happens in the neighbours’ house, but we don't know what happens inside us.”
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08/01/2018 16:14
