These were the words of Pope Francis at Mass on Monday
morning in the Vatican’s Santa Marta.
Pope
Francis focused his homily on the Lord’s exhortation to forgive our
brothers and sisters who have sinned.
Jesus, he said, never tired of
forgiving, and neither should we. As the Gospel says, if our brother
wrongs us seven times in one day, and repents every time, we should
forgive him.
However, Pope Francis warned, there is difference
between being a sinner and being corrupt. Those who sin and repent, who
ask for forgiveness, are humble before the Lord. But those who continue
to sin, while pretending to be Christian, lead a double life, they are
corrupt.
A Christian who is a benefactor, Pope Francis said, who gives
to the Church with one hand, but steals with the other hand from the
country, from the poor, is unjust. And Jesus says: “It would be better
for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into
the sea”. This is because, the Pope explained, that person is deceitful,
and “where there is deceit, the Spirit of God cannot be”.
“We
should all call ourselves sinners”, Pope Francis said, but those who are
corrupt do not understand humility. Jesus called them whitewashed
tombs: they appear beautiful, from the outside, but inside they are full
of dead bones and putrefaction. And a Christian who boasts about being
Christian, but does not lead a Christian life, is corrupt.
We
all know such people, Pope Francis said, and they damage the Church
because they don’t live in the spirit of the Gospel, but in the spirit
of worldliness. St Paul in his letter to the Romans clearly urges them
not to enter into the framework, into the mentality of worldliness,
because it leads to this double life.
The corrupt life is a
“varnished putrefaction”, Pope Francis said. Jesus did not say that
those who are corrupt are sinners, but he said they’re hypocrites. Let
us ask the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis concluded, for the grace to admit
that we are sinners, but not corrupt.