Pope: Christianity is "concrete", it is not a religion "of mere talk" but "of action"

God says: "relieve the oppressed, do right by the orphan, plead for the widow." "This is the Christian life. Instead, mere talk leads to vanity, to that empty pretense of being Christian – but no, that way one is not a Christian at all".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Christianity is a concrete religion, which acts by doing good, it is not a "religion of mere talk" made of hypocrisy and vanity, said Pope Francis today during the Mass in Casa Santa Marta House.  He was commenting on the passage from the prophet Isaiah and the passage of the Gospel of Matthew to explain once again the "evangelical dialectic between words and deeds" .

The  Pope placed emphasis on the words of Jesus, which  unmask the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, calling the disciples and crowds to do as they say, though not as they do: “The Lord teaches us the way of doing: and how many times we find people – ourselves included – so often in the Church, who say, ‘Oh, we are very Catholic.’ ‘But what do you do?’ How many parents say they are Catholics, but never have time to talk to their children, to play with their children, to listen to their children. Perhaps they have their parents in a nursing home, but always are busy and cannot go and visit them and so leave them there, abandoned. ‘But I am very Catholic: I belong to that association,’ [they say]. This is the religion of saying: I say it is so, but I do according to the ways of the world.”

The way of “saying and not doing,” says the Pope, “is a deception.” Isaiah's words indicate what is pleasing to God: “Cease to do evil, learn to do good,” and, “relieve the oppressed, do right by the orphan, plead for the widow.” It also shows another thing: the infinite mercy of God, which says to humanity, “Come, let us talk it over: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”:“The mercy of the Lord goes out to meet those who dare to argue with Him, but to argue about the truth, about the things one does or does not do, [and He argues] in order to correct me. This, then, is the great love of the Lord, in this dialectic between saying and doing. To be a Christian means to do: to do the will of God – and on the last day – because all of us we will have one – that day what shall the Lord ask us? Will He say: “What you have said about me?” No. He shall ask us about the things we did.”

Pope Francis went on to make explicit mention of the lines from Matthew’s Gospel, which foretell of the Last Judgment, when God will call men to account for what they have done to the hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, strangers. “This,” said the Holy Father, “is the Christian life: mere talk leads to vanity, to that empty pretense of being Christian – but no, that way one is not a Christian at all.”: “May the Lord give us this wisdom to understand well where lies the difference between saying and doing, and teach us the way of doing and help us to go down that way, because the way of saying brings us to the place where were these teachers of the law, these clerics, who liked dressing up and acting just like if they were so many Majesties – and this is not the reality of the Gospel. May the Lord teach us this way.”

• Vatican
• Pope Francis
• Mass
• Casa Santa Marta
• homily