A SIMPLE CHURCH

Pope Francis in Brazil

Recently, Father Scott, our chaplain here at the monastery, told me that as he gets older, he finds the need for more simplicity in his life especially in his reading and his prayer. He finds more consolation and joy in simplicity than in difficult to understand theology.

This past week, Pope Francis in his visit to Brazil for World Youth Day made a similar statement to our modern Church especially to the clergy:  “perhaps we have reduced our way of speaking about mystery to rational explanations; but for ordinary people the mystery enters through the heart...The Church needs to make room for “God’s mystery” so “that it can entice people, attract them.”  …

…Another lesson the Church must never forget, is that “it cannot leave SIMPLICITY behind; otherwise she forgets how to speak the language of Mystery … At times we lose people because they don’t understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people. Without the grammar of simplicity, the Church loses the very conditions which make it possible “to fish” for God in the deep waters of His Mystery.”

3 million on the beach at Copacabana, Rio

"It needs to learn to be simple again, warm people’s hearts and rediscover the maternal womb of mercy."  Those of us in the contemplative life know, that if our lives are too "cluttered" there is not room for the Lord to speak to our hearts.  It is refreshing to know that our new Holy Father is a true contemplative, as well as a missionary to all peoples.

While the Holy Father addressed millions of youth, his message is for all of us to be "missionary disciples" and spread the faith. "Bringing the Gospel is bringing God's power to pluck up and break down evil and violence, to destroy and overthrow the barriers and selfishness, intolerance and hatred, so as to build a new world," he said.

With indigenous people- Brazil