And why the elderly are a “precious treasure” even if they are inconvenient or expensive
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Commenting on Sunday’s Gospel, Pope Francis encouraged the faithful to live in the “current of God’s love,” receiving with “gratitude the love that comes from the Father.”
The pope said that it is “difficult but not impossible” to avoid putting our egotism and pride in the way of this current. He reminded that Christ’s love is “not a superficial sentiment but a fundamental attitude of the heart,” which is manifested in living as He lived. It’s lived in “attitudes and actions,” he said, not in “words, words, words.”
This love is to be shared with our neighbor, Francis affirmed, with every brother and sister, “regardless of who he or she is, and of what condition he or she is in — starting with those who are close to me, in my family, in my community, at my work, in my school.”
The pope also explained that this love isn’t to be “reserved for special occasions,” but should be the “constant of our existence.”
And that’s why we are called, he said, to revere the elderly “with love, as a precious treasure,” even if they “create economic problems or inconveniences.”
At the same time, “we should also give the sick every assistance possible, also in the last stage of life,” he said. And “this is the reason that unborn children are always welcome,” he continued, because “life should always be protected and loved, from conception until its natural end.”
We are all loved by God in Jesus, who asks us to love others as he loves us, the pope said, “but we can’t do that unless we have his heart,” he said, and that’s why we are called to go to Mass every Sunday, since Mass is to “form in us the heart of Christ.”
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