Drawing
inspiration from a reading in the Book of the Maccabees, Pope Francis
warned the faithful to be attentive in our secularized and
pleasure-seeking life-style which often attacks the Church and imposes
unjust rules on Christians.
Referring
to the first Reading of the day, the Pope spoke of the passage which
portrays the effort by the Jews to regain their cultural and religious
identity after Antiochus IV Epiphanes suppressed the observance of
Jewish laws and desecrated the temple after having convinced the people
of God to abandon their traditions.
Lord, the Pope prayed, give
me the discernment to recognize the subtle conspiracies of worldliness
that lead us to negotiate our values and our faith.
During his
homily, Pope Francis warned the faithful against what he described as a
“globalized uniformity” which is the result of secular worldliness.
Often
he said, the people of God prefer to distance themselves from the Lord
in favour of worldly proposals. He said worldliness is the root of evil
and it can lead us to abandon our traditions and negotiate our loyalty
to God who is always faithful. This – the Pope admonished – is called
apostasy, which he said is a form of “adultery” which takes place when
we negotiate the essence of our being: loyalty to the Lord.
And
he spoke of the contradiction that is inherent in the fact that we are
not ready to negotiate values, but we negotiate loyalty. This attitude –
he said – “is a fruit of the devil who makes his way forward with the
spirit of secular worldliness”.
And referring again to the
passage in the Book of Maccabees, in which all nations conformed to the
king’s decree and adopted customs foreign to their culture, the Pope
pointed out that this “is not the beautiful globalization, unity of all
nations, each with their own customs but united, but the uniformity of
hegemonic globalization, it is – he said - the single thought: the
result of secular worldliness”
And Pope Francis warned that this
happens today. Moved by the spirit of worldliness, people negotiate
their fidelity to the Lord, they negotiate their identity, and they
negotiate their belonging to a people that God loves.
And with a reference to the 20th
century novel “Lord of the World” that focuses on the spirit of
worldliness that leads to apostasy, Pope Francis warned against the
desire to “be like everyone else” and what he called an “adolescent
progressivism”. “What do you think?” – he said bitterly – “that today
human sacrifices are not made? Many, many people make human sacrifices
and there are laws that protect them”.
What consoles us – he
concluded – is that the Lord never denies himself to the faithful. “He
waits for us, He loves us, He forgives us. Let us pray that His
faithfulness may save us from the worldly spirit that negotiates all.
Let us pray that he may protect us and allow us to go forward, leading
us by the hand, just like a father with his child. Holding the Lord’s
hand we will be safe”.