During his Monday morning homily at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis warned that humanism, when it takes the place of Jesus, can destroy a Christian's identity. He added that Christians cannot 'put up for auction our identity card.â?
POPE FRANCIS
'And we ask the Lord for the Church, that the Lord will guard it from all forms of worldliness. That the Church will always have the identity given to it by Jesus Christ; that we will all have the identity that we received in baptism. May the Lord give us the grace to maintain and preserve our Christian identity against the spirit of worldliness that always grows, justifies itself and is contagious.â?
The Pope explained that worldliness is something that comes about slowly, so Christians must be careful that it doesn't take hold over time.
EXTRACTS FROM THE POPE'S HOMILY
(Source: Vatican Radio)
'Then the king recommended that his whole kingdom should be one people - the one thought; worldliness - and each abandoned their own customs. All peoples adapted themselves to the orders of the king; also many Jews accepted his worship: they sacrificed to idols and profaned the Sabbath. Apostasy. That is, worldliness that leads you to one unique thought, and to apostasy. No differences are permitted: all are equal. And in the history of the Church, the history we have seen, I think of a case, where religious feasts were renamed - the birth of the Lord has another name â?? in order to erase its identity.â?
'It starts from a root, but it is small, and ends up an abomination of desolation, in persecution. This is the deception of worldliness, and why Jesus asked the Father, at that Supper: 'Father, I do not ask you to remove them from the world, but keep them from the world', this mentality, this humanism, which is to take the place of the true man, Jesus Christ, that comes to take away the Christian identity and brings us to the single thought: 'They all do it, why not us?'. This, in these times, should make us think: what is my identity? Is it 'Christian or worldly? Or do I say to myself Christian because I was baptized as a child or was born in a Christian country, where everyone is Christian? Worldliness that comes slowly, it grows, it justifies itself and infects: it grows like the root, it defends itself - 'but, we do as others do, we are not so different' -, always looking for a justification, and eventually it becomes contagious, and many evils come from there.â?
'And we ask the Lord for the Church, that the Lord will guard it from all forms of worldliness. That the Church will always have the identity given to it by Jesus Christ; that we will all have the identity that we received in baptism. May the Lord give us the grace to maintain and preserve our Christian identity against the spirit of worldliness that always grows, justifies itself and is contagious.â?
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