Clergy
“One cannot believe without remembering”. Pope Francis said this off the cuff in his address to the parish priests of Rome, explaining that the Lord “is the Lord of our fathers and grandfathers. He is not a God of the last moment, a God without a family history, a God who, in order to respond to every new paradigm, should throw out precedents as if they were old and ridiculous. A family history ‘never goes out of fashion’. The clothes and the hair of our grandparents may appear old and the pictures sepia toned, but the affection and courage of our fathers, who gave their entire selves so that we might be here and have what we have, are a burning flame in every noble heart”. “Progressing in the faith – Pope Francis explained – is not just the voluntary desire to believe more from now on; it is also a memory exercise by which we look back at fundamental graces”. “We can ‘progress backwards’ – the Pope’s proposal – by digging out of our memory those forgotten treasures and experiences that are often key to understanding the present”. “This is truly ‘revolutionary’: to go back to the roots”, Pope Francis said. And he added off the cuff: “I remember once, I was having my spiritual exercises and got stuck. Then I remembered a paper that my grandmother had on her bedside table: ‘Be careful, God is watching you. Think that you will die without knowing when’. And from then on, my prayer continued”. “A Christian always makes progress in his/her memory”, Pope Francis continued off the cuff: “The clearer the memory of the past is, the clearer the future will be, because we can tell what is really a new path, different from the ones we have already taken which have led us nowhere. Our faith grows by remembering the past, by connecting it with the real story lived by our fathers, the whole people of God, and the entire Church”.
