A Life of Inspiration
One doesn't think of a sermon coming from a Pope as symbolizing fire and brimstone. Yet how else to consider Pope Francis's sermon against corruption delivered on Monday in which he quoted a Biblical passage of the New Testament where Jesus is said to have claimed some sinners deserved to be weighted down and thrown into the sea. Jesus said that? Oh my, oh my. Pope Francis most certainly did. My, oh my.Like the Christ figure, Pope Francis is a humble man of peerless devotion to the core tenets of his faith. He has embarked, like the son of God whom he worships on the emulation of the act of cleansing the moneylenders from the Temple. Ejecting vice, avarice and Mammon, to make full unobstructed room for the sacredness of the Omniscient Spirit and the injunction to be just and holy in one's treatment of others.
It's enough to make a non-believer weep in gratitude.
"Jesus says: It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea", quoted the Pope from the Gospel of St. Luke. People, he railed, who led "a double life", giving money to the Roman Catholic Church that they had stolen from the state or from others were undoubtedly sinners, deserving the wrathful punishment of just desserts.
People involved in corrupt acts were "white-washed tombs", he thundered; "they appear beautiful from the outside, but inside they are full of dead bones and putrefaction." Corruption produces a life that equates with "varnished putrefaction". Can't get much clearer in his purple-prose condemnation of hypocrisy and vice than that, can he?
The man who has chosen personally to bypass all vestiges of grandeur and sumptuous display in his role as Pope has chastised members of his own gatherings for their pride and their inability to be honest brokers. Those who, while professing goodness as priests but whose acts belie their profession have obviously caused him anguish and pain, and it is his intention, it seems, to remove them from authority.
His passion is to give succour to the needy, the impoverished, to welcome into the comfort of the church all those without hope. He represents an amazing contrast to his predecessors. He has emerged as a living, breathing embodiment of all that the writings of the church, quoting Jesus Christ, profess is important; no amount of cautious praise can fully capture the elemental goodness and decency of the man.
Speaking forthrightly of the deficits in human nature and the failures of the institution he represents, he is admirable in his passion. Can he possibly clean up the church he now heads? His lecture to the Church said it all:
"Poverty in the world is a scandal. In a world where there is so much wealth, so many resources to feed everyone, it is unfathomable that there are so many hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many poor persons. Poverty today is a cry. We all have to think if we can become a little poorer, all of us have to do this. How can I become a little poorer in order to be more like Jesus, who was the poor Teacher? First of all I want to tell you something, tell all you young persons: don't let yourselves be robbed of hope. Please, don't let it be stolen from you. The worldly spirit, wealth, the spirit of vanity, arrogance, and pride ... all these things steal hope. Where do I find hope? In the poor Jesus, Jesus who made himself poor for us. And you spoke of poverty. Poverty calls us to sow hope. ..."
Hercules cleaned the Aegean stables, as one of the immense tasks that challenged that super-human character of Greek fable. Pope Francis faces the Herculean task of clearing out the stables of the Vatican and the long reach of the holy Roman Catholic Church and its fallible priests.
More power to him.
Labels: Corruption, Human Relations, Hypocrisy, Innovation, Justice, Poverty, Vatican
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 14, 2013
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