The pope recalled in Casa Santa Marta that God asks Christians to give away everything, but God is always good in repayment, and one will receive 100 times more now, but that doesn't prevent trouble and persecution.
POPE FRANCIS
'And what is the sign, what is the sign that I go forth in giving everything and receiving everything? Happy eyes, happy face, joy, happy eyes... The sign that we are going on this path of everything and nothing, of stunned fullness, is joy.â?
He proposed the example of the Chilean saint Alberto Hurtado, who despite difficulties, was happy because he trusted God.
EXCERPTS OF PAPAL HOMILY IN ENGLISH
(Vatican Radio)
Jesusâ?? words in this story worry the disciples, as he tells them it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In todayâ??s reading from St Markâ??s Gospel, the Pope said, we see Peter asking the Lord what will happen to them, as they have given up everything to follow him. 'Itâ??s almost as if Peter is passing Jesus the bill,â? Pope Francis exclaimed.
Peter didnâ??t know what to say: the young man has gone his way, but what about us? Pope Francis said Jesusâ?? reply is clear: I tell you there is no-one who has given up everything and has not received everything. You will receive everything, in that overflowing measure with which God gives his gifts.
The Pope repeats the Gospel words: 'there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to comeâ?.
The Lord is incapable of giving less than everything, the Pope said: when he gives us something, he gives all of himself.
Yet there is a word in this reading, he continued, which gives us cause for reflection: in this present age we receive a hundred times more houses and brothers, together with persecutions. The Pope said this means entering into a different way of thinking, a different way of behaving. Jesus gives everything of himself, because the fullness of God is a fullness emptied out on the Cross.
