On the occasion of exchanging Christmas greetings with the heads of the various dicasteries of the Holy See, Pope Francis spoke of the need to be vigilant against the “devil of courtesy” who misleads those who serve the Church and suggests that they do not need to be converted .
(Vatican News Network) On the morning of December 22, Pope Francis received cardinals, bishops and members of the various dicasteries of the Holy See in the Blessing Hall of the Apostolic Palace, and exchanged Christmas greetings with them according to tradition. In his speech, the Pope invited them to be “vigilant” and not to think that they have avoided evil and that they do not need to “convert”. The Pope said that “a person can get lost at home,” where there appears to be order on the surface, but the devil knows how to make people lose their hearts to serve the Gospel.
It is therefore necessary, the Pope underlined, to “return to the essentials”, to know how to constantly thank God for the blessings received, and at the same time “return”. Refuge is not only “staying away from evil”, but also “doing good to the best of one’s ability”. The celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council this year and the parallel journey of the Church today are occasions for conversion. For Christians, conversion is an essential attitude.
“It is not enough to condemn evil, not even the one that pervades us. What you have to do is decide to change in the face of it. Just condemning makes us think that the problem has been solved, but in reality it is important to change in order to no longer be imprisoned by the logic of evil, which often arises from worldliness”.
It is seen that above all those who serve God need to be “vigilant”, because their greatest danger is “being static”, that is, “secretly thinking that there is no need for any new understanding of the Gospel”. This, the Pope said, was a mistake “trying to keep Jesus’ message in a single formula that will always be valid” instead of continuing to “make it manifest in the language and ways of the moment”.
According to the Pope, this rigidity fails to recognize that evil evolves and that temptations once driven out are more sinister than before, but reappear in a more graceful form. (cf. Lk 11:24-26).
For this reason it is “possible to get lost at home”, like the firstborn in the parable of the prodigal son. (Lk 15) The Pope exhorts, “within the walls of the institutions that serve the Holy See, in the heart of the ecclesial community”, that “we are safe, we are the best, we must not convert”, which is a kind of error. The Pope thus explained why some of his words were sometimes harsh.
“We are more dangerous than others because we fall into the temptation of the ‘demon of good manners’, who arrives silently and brings flowers. If what I say sometimes sounds harsh and harsh, it is not because I don’t believe in kindness and the value of tenderness, but because it is better to leave consolation to the tired and oppressed, and to find the courage to distress the “consolati”, as Tonino Bello, Servant of God, said, because sometimes their consolation is a deception of the devil, not the grace of the Holy Spirit ».
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