"You are the heirs of a great testimony, a precious witness to Christ. He is the Light of the World; he is the light of our lives! The martyrs of Korea...handed over their bodies to their persecutors; to us they have handed on a perennial witness that the light of Christ's truth dispels all darkness, and the love of Christ is gloriously triumphant. With the certainty of his victory over death, and our participation in it, we can face the challenge of Christian discipleship today, in our own circumstances and time...
Keep close to one another, draw ever closer to God, and with your bishops and priests spend these years in building a holier, more missionary and humble Church, a Church which loves and worships God by seeking to serve the poor, the lonely, the infirm, and the marginalized.
In your Christian lives, you will find many occasions that will tempt you...to push away the stranger, the needy, the poor, and the broken-hearted. It is these people especially who repeat the cry of the woman of the Gospel: Lord, help me! [This]...plea is the cry of everyone who searches for love, acceptance, and friendship with Christ. It is the cry of so many people in our anonymous cities, the cry of so many of your own contemporaries, and the cry of all those martyrs who even today suffer persecution and death for the name of Jesus: Lord, help me! Let us respond, not like those who push away people who make demands on us, as if serving the needy gets in the way of our being close to the Lord. No! We are to be like Christ, who responds to every plea for his help with love, mercy, and compassion.
A responsibility which the Lord gives you...is the duty to be vigilant, not to allow the pressures, the temptations, and the sins of ourselves or others to dull our sensitivity to the beauty of holiness, to the joy of the Gospel."
- Pope Francis, from Magnificat, September 2015
Words from Pope Francis are to be heeded! His message is such a good one for the world today!
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