Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – Ecclesial communion is “generated and preserved by the Holy Spirit.” And this makes it possible at all times to invoke and encounter the miracle of a “humble Church,” a Church that “does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride” but “bends down to wash the feet of humanity.” A Church “that is entirely attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world.”Thus Pope Leo XIV recalled the basic characteristics of the mystery that gives life to the Church, reminding everyone that she “is not merely a religious institution, nor is she simply identified with hierarchies and structures.”He did so in the homily he delivered during the Eucharistic liturgy which he presided today, on the occasion of the Jubilee of the “Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies.”The task and mission of these bodies, the Pontiff emphasized, can be grasped by contemplating and rediscovering “the mystery of the Church,” a unique reality where relationships “do not respond to the logic of power”—what Pope Francis called “worldly logic”—but “the primacy belongs to the spiritual life, which reveals to us that we are all children of God, brothers and sisters, called to serve one another.” Therefore, in the Church, “no one is called to dominate; all are called to serve. No one should impose his or her own ideas; we must all listen to one another. No one is excluded; we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it and seek it together.”Pope Leo drew inspiration from the passage from the Gospel according to Luke proposed by the liturgy of the day – where Jesus recounts the Parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the Temple – to highlight what distinguishes the authentic “walking together” of ecclesial communion from the pretensions of those who use religious practices and ecclesiastical bodies to satisfy their own craving for prominence and power.At first glance, Pope Leo recalled, the Pharisee and the tax collector in Jesus’ parable “go up together” to the Temple to pray. But in reality, “they are divided; and there is no communication between them.”The Pharisee’s prayer, “though seemingly addressed to God, is only a mirror in which he looks at, justifies and praises himself.” He judges the other, the tax collector, “with contempt and looks down on him. The Pharisee is obsessed with his own ego and, in this way, ends up focused on himself without having a relationship with either God or others.”This, the Bishop of Rome noted, “can also happen in the Christian community.” And it happens when “the claim to be better than others, as the Pharisee does with the tax collector, creates division and turns the community into a judgmental and exclusionary place; and when one leverages one’s role to exert power, rather than to serve.”Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector’s prayer asks only for mercy on him, the sinner. And it is he, the Pontiff recalled, who we should look to, because “with the same humility that he showed, we too must recognize within the Church that we are all in need of God and of one another.”Leo XIV asked the synodal teams and participatory bodies to help everyone “understand that, prior to any differences, we are called in the Church to walk together in the pursuit of God. By clothing ourselves with the sentiments of Christ.” In this way, it will also be possible to “live with confidence and a new spirit amid the tensions that run through the life of the Church: between unity and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation. We must allow the Spirit to transform them, so that they do not become ideological contrapositions and harmful polarizations. It is not a question,” the Pontiff clarified, “of resolving them by reducing one to the other, but of allowing them to be purified by the Spirit, so that they may be harmonized and oriented toward a common discernment.”The Successor of Peter recalled that “truth is not possessed, but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love.” And these are the distinctive traits of “a humble Church,” that “does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone.”Concluding his homily, Pope Leo invoked the intercession of the Virgin Mary, with the words of a prayer by Bishop and Servant of God Tonino Bello: “Holy Mary, woman of conviviality, nourish in our Churches the desire for communion … Help them to overcome internal divisions. Intervene when the demon of discord creeps into their midst. Extinguish the fires of factionalism. Reconcile mutual disputes. Defuse their rivalries. Stop them when they decide to go their own way, neglecting convergence on common projects.” (GV) Agenzia Fides, 26/10/2025)
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