It is terrible to “make money with death”, but “unfortunately today the investments that give the most income are weapons factories”. Pope Francis launched yet another appeal against war and, in particular, against the arms industry, which generates profits by building instruments of death, yesterday, once again at the end of the usual general audience on Wednesday , forcefully asked to pray for peace. “We pray for the peoples who are victims of war – said the Pontiff during the greetings at the end of the catechesis held in the Paul VI Hall –. War is always a defeat, always. Let’s think about the tormented Ukraine which suffers so much. Let’s think about the inhabitants of Palestine and Israel, who are at war. Let’s think about the Rohingya, about Myanmar, and ask for peace. We ask for true peace for these peoples and for the whole world.”
At the center of the weekly reflection, Francis placed the theme of faith, the first of the three theological virtues, which, he recalled, “are the great gifts that God gives to our moral capacity. Without them we could be prudent, just, strong and temperate, but we would not have eyes that see even in the dark, we would not have a heart that loves even when it is not loved, we would not have a hope that dares against all hope.”
Faith “is the act with which the human being freely abandons himself to God”, recalled Bergoglio, who then indicated, as witnesses of this ability, Abraham and then Mary: both, trusting in God, in fact follow a unknown road, which many would have avoided because it was too risky.
This virtue, Francis then added, is what “makes the Christian”. Because “being Christian is not first and foremost accepting a culture, with the values that accompany it, but being Christian is welcoming and cherishing a bond, a bond with God: me and God; my person and the lovable face of Jesus. This bond is what makes us Christians.”
Then recalling the evangelical episode of the calmed storm, the Pope noted that “the great enemy of faith: it is not intelligence, it is not reason, as, alas, someone continues to obsessively repeat, but the great enemy of faith is fear.”
And this is why, also, “for a Christian parent, aware of the grace that has been given to him, that is the gift to ask for his child too: faith. With it a parent knows that, even in the midst of life’s trials, his child will not drown in fear.”
