Friday, September 20, 2013

Francis: a Big Heart


Early September in a neighbor's garden.
The Interview with the Holy Father has been making the news.  It is long, but easy to read.  And very worthwhile.  (Google "A Big Heart Open to God/America magazine." In this what follows everything in quotes is from the interview.) 
There are very many parts of the interview that are worth highlighting, but I am especially cheered by his comments about the church.  Too often when we say church we mean the leaders of the church.  In several places in the interview our Holy Father Francis makes it clear that all of us are the Church.  "We should not even think, therefore, that 'thinking with the church' means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church....The church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows."
"And all the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibility of believing through a supernatural sense of all the people walking together.  When the dialogue among the people and the bishops and the pope goes down this road and is genuine, then it is assisted by the Holy Spirit....The church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people."
I have always known that the Church is all of its members, but I frequently say "church " when I really mean the leadership of the church.  I learned a long time ago about the infallibility of all the faithful, but I've never heard it put so clearly by a pope in recent years.  For years a woman who usually makes the announcements in her church before Mass has been greeting the congregation by saying "Good morning, Church!"  I started doing this several months ago.  I hope it reminds, not only those assembled, but myself, that we are all the church.

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