Pauline Family audience with the Pope

The members of the Pauline Family attended an audience with Pope Francis on November 27 at Paul VI hall on the occasion of the closing of the centenary of Pauline charism. In his address, the pope commended the Paulines for their ministry of evangelization referring to their specific call as a “DNA” that is flowing in their blood.

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Pauline Family!

I receive you joyfully on the occasion of the centenary of your foundation, the work of Blessed Giacomo Alberione. I greet the Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests, the consecrated persons and the lay faithful. I thank the Vicar General for his words, and I associate myself heartily to the memory of the mourned Superior General, Don Silvio Sassi, who participates from Heaven in this moment of celebration.

1. May this, your centenary, offer you the opportunity to renew your commitment to live the faith and to communicate it, in particular through the editorial and multi-media instruments, typical of your charism. Those who receive the Good News that God is love and, in Jesus Christ, communicates Himself to humanity, are all men, every man and woman who lives in this world; and the recipient is the whole man, in the totality of his person, of his history and of his culture. “You received without pay, give without pay” (Matthew 10:8), says Jesus. In these words is the secret of evangelization, which is to communicate the Gospel in the style of the Gospel, namely gratuitously, the joy of the gift received out of pure love. Only one who has experienced such joy can communicate it, in fact, he cannot not communicate it, because “the good always tends to communicate itself … By communicating it, the good takes root and develops” (Evangelii Gaudium, 9).

I encourage you to continue in the way that Don Alberione opened and how your Family has followed up to now, always having its gaze turned to vast horizons. We must never forget that “evangelization is connected, essentially, with the proclamation of the Gospel to those who do not know Jesus Christ or who have always rejected him. Many of them seek God secretly, moved by the nostalgia of his face, also in countries of ancient Christian tradition. All have the right to receive the Gospel. Christians have the duty to proclaim it without excluding anyone” (Ibid.,14). This drive to “peoples,” but also to the existential fringes, this ‘Catholic” drive, you have in fact in your blood, in your “DNA,” by the very fact that your Founder was inspired by the figure and the mission of the Apostle Paul.

2. The Second Vatican Council presented us the Church as a people on the way to an end, which surpasses everything and fulfils everything in God and in his glory. This vision of the Church on the way is expressive of Christian hope; in fact, the ultimate end of our Christian action on earth is the possession of eternal life. Therefore, our being Church on the way, while rooting us in the commitment to proclaim Christ and his love for every creature, impedes us from remaining prisoners of earthly and worldly structures; it has its spirit open and makes us capable of prospects and instances that will find their fulfilment in the Lord’s blessedness.

Consecrated persons are the special witnesses of this perspective of hope, above all with a lifestyle marked by joy. The presence of Religious is a sign of joy – that joy that flows from a profound experience of God, who fills our heart and makes us truly happy, so much so that we have no need to seek our joy elsewhere.

Other important elements that nourish the joy of Religious are the genuine fraternity experienced in the community and complete oblation in serving the Church and brothers, especially the neediest.

3. Blessed Giacomo Alberione perceived, in the proclamation of Christ and of the Gospel to the popular masses, the most authentic and the most necessary charity that can be offered to men and women thirsty for truth and justice. He was touched profoundly by Saint Paul’s words: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16) and he made them the ideal of his life and of his mission. Following in Jesus’ footsteps and in imitation of the Apostle to the Gentiles, he was able to see the crowds as scattered sheep, needy of sure guidelines in the path of life. Therefore, he spent his whole life in breaking the bread of the Word for them in languages appropriate to the times.

Thus you are also called to spend yourselves in the service of the people of today, to whom the Spirit sends you, with creativity and dynamic fidelity to your charism, singling out more ideal ways so that Jesus is proclaimed.

The vast horizons of evangelization and the urgent need to witness the evangelical message to all constitute the field of your apostolate. So many still wait to know Jesus Christ. The imagination of charity knows no limits and is able to open ever new ways to bring the breath of the Gospel to cultures and to the most diverse social environments.

Such an urgent mission requires incessant personal and communal conversion. Only hearts totally open to the action of Grace are able to interpret the signs of the times and to respond to the appeals of humanity in need of hope and peace. In your following of Christ and in your witness, the Year of Consecrated Life, which is about to begin, will certainly be of help to you.

Dear brothers and sisters, may the Holy Virgin, Mother of the Church, protect you, help you and be the sure guide of the path of the Pauline Family, so that it can bring to fulfilment every plan of goodness. With these wishes, I assure you of my remembrance in prayer for each of you and, in turn, I ask you, please, to pray for me. And now I gladly invoke the Lord’s blessing on you, on all those you represent, on the readers of your magazines and on those you meet in your daily apostolate. (Address translated from Italian by Zenit)

Not only food but also showers for the homeless

Pope Francis blesses the sculpture"Jesus the homeless" at the Vatican
in this December 2013 photo. (Photo: CNS/L'Osservatore Romano)

“FOR I was hungry and you gave me food... a stranger and you welcomed me… naked and you clothed me… (Mt. 25:35-36).

For the homeless, a little food to stave off their hunger and a roof over where to lay their head, especially on a cold winter night matters a lot. But having a good shower to keep them clean and smelling nice is a great boost to their dignity as well.

The Vatican thought of installing showers in the tourist washrooms just outside St. Peter's Square so the homeless may be able to wash themselves. The inspiration came upon the papal almoner, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, who recently encountered a homeless man at St. Peter's Square. The monsignor learned that it was the man's 50th birthday so he invited him for a meal in a nearby restaurant. But the man declined, explaining that the restaurant would probably not allow him because he smelled bad. (But another report said the archbishop prevailed on the man they ate in a Chinese restaurant.)

Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, who is in charge of helping the poor, thought it would be a good idea to install three showers in the public restrooms. So with the approval of the pope, he commissioned that showers be installed in the existing public restrooms in St. Peter’s Square. The archbishop also urged nearby parishes in Rome to do the same so the homeless would have a place where they could go and wash themselves.

In our main convent in Pasay, poor people usually come knocking at the gate to ask for food or other forms of assistance. There is an elderly sister who is in charge of assisting the poor, giving them food or clothes or sometimes referring them to the local government's social welfare program. Once in a while, when she sees the person looks like he or she is in need of a good scrub, she would encourage the person to take a bath at a secluded part in the compound, and afterwards she gives the person a change of clean clothes and food to eat.

There is no denying the fact that having gone under the shower makes one feel good; all of us do. It is the cleansing effects of the water that does wonders. It has a healing and therapeutic effect not only on the physical level but spiritual as well.

Being homeless is an affront to the dignity of a person. It makes the person feel uprooted and insecure. There are a hundred of reasons why a person becomes homeless. I have read so many stories of people who have experienced this deprivation. Some did by choice, but many driven by circumstances they can’t control.

During my first visit in Canada many years ago, it surprised me to see some homeless people on the streets. I was thinking then that first world countries did not have homeless people.

In poor countries like the Philippines, it is so common to see homeless people littering the streets or living under the bridge. So it comes as a shock, but also an eye opener for me that homelessness is an issue that is very much real in North America and even in Europe.

Since Francis became pope, the role of the papal almoner has become more visible in the life of the homeless that populate the city of Rome. The poor have a special place in the heart of this pope. Of course, all the other popes before him had also the same concern. However, Pope Francis, who had been particularly close to the underprivileged when he was still the archbishop of Argentina, has made it especially clear that he would be close to the poor, both in the material and spiritual sense of the word.

In his apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel”, the pope decried what he calls the “economy of exclusion and inequality” that relegates the poor to the margins of society.

 “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

“Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a ‘throw away’ culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the ‘exploited’ but the outcast, the ‘leftovers’.” (EG, 53)

Some of us, (myself included) sometimes become immune to the sights of homeless people around us, that they become invisible before our eyes. If the same indifferent attitude still afflicts us, it is perhaps about time that we have to change our perspective and look at these brothers and sisters “up close and personal.” Many of us may not have the financial means to help them out (although help can be done in many ways, not necessarily financial), we can at least recognize their existence. I believe the best thing we can do for them is to acknowledge that they do exist, deserving of every ounce of dignity befitting any human being.

And you know what? If we look at their situation with understanding eyes and compassionate heart, then we will be able to do something, even how little or insignificant it may seem.

"Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." (Mt. 25:40)