Pope Francis received members of the Apostolic College of Rome. The Pope invites them to take off their masks, to come out of themselves and to open up to dialogue.
(Vatican News Network)In order to be a missionary close to God and to others, it is necessary to have the courage to express who we really are, to be able to come out of ourselves and to be open to dialogue. When Pope Francis received the members of the Pontifical Apostolic College in Rome on January 21 in the Apostolic Building of the Vatican, he told them so. The Chuanxin Public School was founded by Pope Urban VIII in 1627, with the aim of cultivating priests for missionary areas. Coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Congregation for Propaganda, the Pope met with the seminarians and their trainers of the Congregation for Propaganda, and proposed three characteristics that missionaries should have.
The first quality of a missionary is having the courage to express who he really is. To this end, the Pope invited everyone present to take off their masks, “show their limitations and contradictions in front of others, overcome the fear of being judged”, cultivate sincerity and humility, so as to sincerely look at their own fragility, inner scarcity.
“We must remember that the missionary is convincing not because of the clothes he wears or his outward attitude, but because of his simplicity and sincerity,” the Pope emphasized.
The second quality of a missionary is the ability to step outside of himself. This, explained the Pope, is because “the life of faith is like a continuous ‘Exodus’, out of the ruts of our ideas, out of the fences of our fears, out of the little details that make us feel safe, otherwise we will not have the confidence of God. Worship, I’m afraid it will just project their own needs and become idolatry.”
Stepping out of ourselves has its risks, but it benefits us. So did Abraham, Moses, and the fishermen who were called to follow their master on the shore of Galilee. As members of a multicultural, multilingual, and multi-sensitivity group like Chuanxin Public School, seminarians should cherish this great grace, open up to others and to other worlds, and then increase their own prosperity.
Referring to the third characteristic of the missionary, namely: openness to dialogue, the Pope urged everyone to “open up a dialogue with God” in prayer and to “open up completely to others”, promoting a “dialogue of fraternity”.
The Pope concluded by saying: “The world needs dialogue, it needs peace. The world needs men and women who bear witness to this. I urge you to learn from the ‘martyrs of dialogue’. Some of you have these martyrs in your country, who took courage to walk On this path of peacemaking. Do not be afraid to take this path too, but go to the end, swim against the current, share Jesus, and spread the faith that He has bestowed upon you.”
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