First Epistle Of Saint Paul To Timothy – He warns him against heretics
[1] Now the Spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils, [2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy, and having their conscience seared,
How to twist the Gospel for Dummies: Commenting on the Gospel of St. John in which Jesus chases the merchants from the Temple, the pope dwelt upon the expression: “you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:16). For Francis, this refers to “a type of religiosity”: Jesus’ act is an “act of cleansing, of purification”. God “does not appreciate exterior worship performed with material sacrifices and based on personal interests,” he explained.
On March 7, 2015, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Roman parish of All Saints. He went there for the fiftieth anniversary of the first Mass celebrated in Italian by Paul VI in that very church.
It is “a reference to authentic worship, to a correspondence between liturgy and life; an appeal that applies in every age and even for us today — that correspondence between liturgy and life.” And he insisted: “This is not primarily a doctrine to be understood, or a rite to be performed; naturally it is also this, but in another way, it is essentially different: it is a font of life and of light for our pilgrimage of faith.”
“The Church calls us to have and to foster an authentic liturgical life, so that there may be harmony between that which the liturgy celebrates and that which we experience in our lives,” continued Francis, for whom the “disciple of Jesus does not go to Church simply to observe a precept, to feel he/she is in good standing with God who then will not “disturb” him/her too much.” No, he goes “to encounter the Lord and to find in his grace, operating in the Sacraments, the power to think and act according to the Gospel.” “We cannot, he warned, mislead ourselves of being able to enter the Lord’s house and “cover up”, with prayer and acts of devotion, conduct contrary to the requirements of justice, honesty and/or charity to our neighbor.”
At the end of Mass, the pope greeted the faithful, thanking them for their welcome and their participation in the Mass, thus showing the meaning of what he had said in his sermon. Let us thank God, he declared, “for what He has done in favor of His Church in these past fifty years of liturgical reforms. It was an act of courage on the part of the Church to draw closer to the people of God, that they might better understand the liturgical act.” And he declared: “it is important for us to follow the Mass like this. There can be no going back to the past. We must always go forward, for he who goes backward is mistaken.”
Commentary: The pope’s statements in his sermon raise several questions: are we to understand that as Jesus, when chasing the sellers from the Temple, accomplished an “act of cleansing and of purification”, so Paul VI, with his liturgical reform, set the Church on the path of cleansing and of purification? Likewise, are we to believe that the denunciation of “a type of religiosity”, comparable to the dealings of the merchants in the Temple, is directed at the Mass celebrated before the Novus Ordo Missae, the Mass of St. Pius V that sanctified so many generations? But it is especially Francis’ remarks after his Mass that need to be clarified, for if “there can be no return to the past,” what did Benedict XVI do, in 2007, when he recognized that the Tridentine Mass had never been abolished? He was going backwards, so he was mistaken!
(sources: apic/radiovatican/vis – DICI no.313 April 3, 2015)