“This is the error of trying to crystallize the message of Jesus in a single, perennially valid form. The opposite of conversion is “immobility,” which he said is “the secret belief that we have nothing else to learn from the Gospel.”
“Conversion is a never-ending story,” he said, saying the conversion that the Second Vatican Council initiated “was an effort to understand the Gospel more fully and to make it relevant, living and effective in our time.” He also noted that this year marked the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, calling it “a great moment of conversion for the entire Church.” “Rather, it is because it is good to keep our caresses for the weary and the oppressed, and to have the courage to ‘afflict the comfortable,’” he said, saying there are times “when the comfort they enjoy is only the deception of the devil and not a gift of the Spirit.” Pope Francis acknowledged that there are times when he says things to curia members “that might sound harsh and pointed,” but he insisted that when he says these things, “it is not because I don’t believe in the value of kindness and persuasion.” “Precisely for this reason, we could easily fall into the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion,” he said, saying, “we are in greater danger than all others, because we are beset by the ‘elegant demon,’ who does not make a loud entrance, but comes with flowers in his hand.” “For those who set out and go astray, it is easy to recognize how far they have wandered for those who remain at home, it is not easy to appreciate the hell they are living in, convinced that they are mere victims, treated unjustly by constituted authority and, in the last analysis, by God himself,” he said.Įveryone has had the experience of getting lost, he said, saying members of the curia need to be especially attentive, because “we are now living ‘at home,’ within the walls of the institution, in the service of the Holy See, at the heart of the Church.” He also pointed to forms of conversion required by the elder and younger brothers in the parable the Prodigal Son.
“They had cast out the demon, but he had returned seven times stronger, and under the guise of austerity and rigor he had introduced rigidity and the presumption that they were better than others,” Pope Francis said. However, eventually “she became the soul of the Jansenist resistance, intransigent and unbending even in the face of ecclesiastical authority,” the pope said, noting that the nuns in her abbey were often described as, “pure as angels but proud as demons.”
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