On November 1, 2016, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Malmo, Sweden at the end of an ecumenical trip to Sweden. In talking about the saints, the Holy Father said a number of things that I want to mention to us again, a little more than a year after he said them, because they are well worth hearing again.
Pope Francis remarked that the best description of the saints is found in the Beatitudes. He also said that Christ’s followers today are called to confront the troubles and anxieties of our age with the spirit and love of Jesus, as Christian saints have done throughout the ages. Because our new situations require new energy and new commitment, Pope Francis offered a new list of Beatitudes for modern Christians:
Blessed are they who remain faithful while enduring evils inflicted on them by others and forgive them from their heart.
Blessed are they who look into the eyes of the abandoned and marginalized and show them their closeness.
Blessed are those who see God in every person and strive to make others also discover him.
Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home.
Blessed are those who renounce their own comfort in order to help others.
Blessed are those who pray and work for full communion between Christians.
Pope Francis commented that all these are messengers of God’s mercy and tenderness. Surely, the Holy Father believes, they will receive from God their merited reward. I think that it can be helpful to look on these New Beatitudes as the priorities that Pope Francis has stressed for the four years that he has been pope: the importance of faithfulness and forgiveness, caring for those on the margins, reaching out to evangelize others, caring for the environment and integrated ecology, and furthering ecumenical efforts.
When I think of the recently Blessed Stanley Rother and Capuchin Father Solanus Casey who will be beatified later this month, I see them as individuals who lived out well this new list of Beatitudes. Blessed Stanley was certainly someone who remained faithful while enduring evils inflicted on him by others. One of his famous sayings was that the “Shepherd does not run at the first sign of danger.” Father Solanus clearly looked into the eyes of the abandoned and showed them that God had not forgotten them or forsaken them.
Let’s ask their prayers for us that we also may remain faithful in these difficult times when the culture of death threatens to overwhelm us. Let us continue to preach the Gospel on every occasion and, when necessary, use words.