With members of the Neocatechumenal Way

On Saturday (February 1), beginning at 12:30pm local time in Rome, the Holy Father met with members of the Neocatechumenal Way.  The meeting took place in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican.

 

Address of the Holy Father, Pope Francis

To the Neocatechumenal Way Community

Dear brothers and sisters,

I thank the Lord for the joy of your faith and for the ardor of your Christian witness. Thanks be to God. I greet you all cordially, starting with the International team responsible for the Neocatechumenal Way, and including the priests, seminarians and catechists. I send an affectionate greeting to the children, in attendance in great number. My thoughts go out in a special way to the families, who will go out to different parts of the world to proclaim and witness to the Gospel. The Church is grateful for your generosity! I thank you for all that you do in the Church and in the world. And precisely in the name of the Church, our Mother, ... I would like to propose to you some simple recommendations.

The first is to have the utmost care to build and to preserve the communion within the particular Churches in which you will work. The Way has its own charism and dynamic, a gift, which like all of the gifts of the Spirit, has a profound ecclesial dimension; this means paying attention to the life of the Churches to which your leaders send you, to enhance the riches, to suffer for the weaknesses if necessary, and to walk together, like one flock, under the guidance of the pastors of the local Churches. Communion is essential sometimes it can be better to renounce living in all the details that your itinerary demands, in order to ensure the unity among those who form one ecclesial community, of which you must always feel that you are part.

Another recommendation: wherever you may go, it would do you well to think that the Spirit of God always gets there ahead of us. The Lord always precedes us! ... Even in the most faraway places, even in the most diverse cultures, God scatters everywhere the seeds of his Word. From here, flows the necessity to give special attention to the cultural context in which you, families, will go to work: it consists of an environment often very different from the one from which you come. Many of you will have to work hard to learn the local language, sometimes it will be difficult, and this effort is appreciated. Even more important will be your commitment to learn the culture you will encounter, knowing how to recognize the need of the Gospel, which is present, but also that action that the Holy Spirit has accomplished in the life and in the history of every people.

Finally, I exhort you to care lovingly for each other, in a particular way for the weakest. The Neocatechumenal Way, as an itinerary of discovery of one’s own baptism, is a demanding road, along which a brother or a sister can come upon unforeseen difficulties. In these cases, the exercise of patience and of mercy on the part of the community is a sign of maturity in the faith. The freedom of each person must not be forced, and even the eventual choice of someone who decides to seek, outside of the Way, other forms of Christian life that help him to grow in the response to the call of the Lord must be respected.

Dear families, brothers and sisters, I encourage you to bring the gospel of Christ everywhere, even in the most de-Christianized environments, especially in the existential peripheries. Evangelize with love, bring to everyone the love of God. Tell everyone you will meet on the streets of your mission that God loves us as we are, even with our limits, with our mistakes, with our sins. For this, he sent his Son, so that he could take our sins upon himself. Be messengers and witnesses of the infinite goodness and the inexhaustible mercy of the Father. I entrust you to the Virgin Mary, that she may inspire and always sustain your apostolate. In the school of this tender Mother, be zealous and joyful missionaries.  And don’t ever lose the gift of joy.  Now continue your good work!