The Face of Mercy / Daniel Conway

‘Get up and go,’ evangelize, share the love and mercy of God

If anything is clear four years into his papacy, it’s that Pope Francis can’t stand the thought of “lazy Christians” who prefer their own comfort to carrying on the work of Christ. “The Church should be on its feet and on the journey, listening to the restlessness of the people, and always with joy,” the pope preached recently.

In response to “the restlessness of the people,” the Church acts boldly and decisively to comfort and heal all those who are in need. This is the way of Jesus, who never rested, never said “no” when confronted with the needs of his people, and never placed his own comfort ahead of his divine mission.

According to Pope Francis, the vocation, and the great consolation of the Church, is to evangelize.

“But in order to evangelize: ‘Get up and go!’ One doesn’t say: ‘Stay seated, calm, in your house’: No! In order to be faithful to the Lord, the Church should always be on its feet and on the journey: ‘Get up and go.’ A Church that does not rise up, that is not on the journey, is sick.”

And the pope continues, this can cause the Church to be closed in on itself, with many psychological and spiritual traumas—“closed into a little world of gossiping, of things … closed, without horizons.” And so, he says, the Church must “get up and go,” it must be “on its feet and on the journey.” This is how the Church must go about evangelizing, the pope says.

“All men, all women have a restlessness in their hearts—[they may be] good or bad, but there is a restlessness. Listen to that restlessness. It’s not saying: ‘Go out and proselytize.’ No, no! ‘Go and listen.’ Listening is the second step. The first: ‘Get up and go’; the second: ‘Listen.’ That ability to listen: What do people feel? What does the heart of the people feel? What does it think? But do they think mistaken things? If so, I want to hear these mistaken things, in order to understand where the restlessness is. We all have this restlessness within. The second step for the Church is to find the restlessness of the people.”

Pope Francis shares with us his profound hope that the Church can be always on its feet, a mother who listens, and who rises up to help all who are in need.

But first we must learn to soften our hardened hearts. “The Lord softens those with hard hearts, those who condemn all who are outside the law,” Pope Francis says. He also says that those who are hard-hearted do not know the tenderness of God and his ability to remove hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh.

“This causes suffering in the Church. The closed hearts, the hearts of stone, the hearts which do not want to be open, do not want to hear, the hearts which only know the language of condemnation. They know how to condemn, they do not know how to say: ‘Explain it to me, why do you say this? Why this? Explain it to me.’ No, they are closed. That’s all they know. They have no need of explanations,” said Pope Francis.

“A closed heart cannot let the Holy Spirit enter in,” the Holy Father says. “A closed heart, a hardened heart, a pagan heart doesn’t let the Spirit in.

“Today, we look at the tenderness of Jesus, the witness of obedience, that great witness, Jesus, who has given life, which makes us look for the tenderness of God, confronting us, our sins, our weaknesses,” the pope says. “Let us enter this dialogue and let us call for the grace of the Lord, which softens the rigid hearts of those people who are always closed in the law and condemn all who are outside the law. They do not know that the Word became flesh, that the word is a witness to obedience. They do not know the tenderness of God, and his ability to take out the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.”

The call of Jesus is clear: We must get up and go! We should exchange our hardened hearts for hearts that are tender, sharing with others—especially those most in need—the love and mercy of our God.
 

(Daniel Conway is a member of The Criterion’s editorial committee.) †