During the General Audience, Pope Francis warned against a powerful enemy whose strategy is discreet but destructive: apathy.
He says it takes away the taste for life and leads to seeing everything as gray, monotonous and boring. And it also reinforces the temptation to escape from reality.
POPE FRANCIS
Apathy is defined as the “noonday devil,” the demon of midday: it comes in the middle of the day, when fatigue is at its peak and the remaining hours seem monotonous, impossible to live.
The Pope encouraged the audience to regain the will to live. He said that one must have the courage to embrace the “here and now.” He also lamented that many good people abandon the path of good, deceived by the thought that their lives are not worth living.
POPE FRANCIS
How many people, in the hands of apathy, moved by a faceless restlessness, have stupidly abandoned the path of good that they had undertaken.
The demon of apathy wants to destroy that simple joy of the here and now, that pleasant stupor of reality; it wants to make you believe that everything is vain, that nothing makes sense, that it is not worth taking care of anything or anyone.
At the audience, Pope Francis publicly praised 95-year-old Albanian Cardinal Ernest Simoni who was present. He was created a cardinal in 2016 and spent nearly three decades in a cell during the Soviet regime. Pope Francis said he was a living martyr.
JRB
TR: AT
