"How beautiful the freedom, generosity, hope of a man and a woman of the Church. Instead, how ugly and evil the rigidity of a woman or a man of the Church, that clerical rigidity that has no hope". "God forgives everyone, He is just waiting for you to approach".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - In this Year of Mercy, there are two paths: that of those who hope in the mercy of God, who forgives everything, and that of those locked within a "clerical rigidity" which closes hearts said Pope Francis during mass this morning in Casa Santa Marta, taking a cue from the first reading of the day from the Book of Numbers, about Balaam, a prophet hired by a king to curse Israel.

Balaam - said the Pope - "had his faults, but even the sins. Because we all have sins, all. We are all sinners. But do not panic, God is greater than our sins". “Balaam meets the angel of the Lord on his path who changes his heart." "He doesn’t change colours” but "changes from error to truth and describes what he sees" the People of God, who dwell in tents in the desert and he "beyond the desert sees fruitfulness, beauty, victory." He opened his heart, "repents" and "sees far, sees the truth", because " good always helps us see the truth", a “truth that gives hope".

Pope Francis continued, “hope; this is a Christian virtue, a great gift from God that enables us to see far beyond our problems, pains, difficulties , far beyond our sins”.  It enables us to "see the beauty of God." "When I'm with someone who has this virtue of hope and it is a bad period in his or her life – maybe an illness, or a particular worry for a son or daughter or someone in the family, whatever it may be - but this person has this virtue, in midst of their pain, this person has the piercing eye, the freedom to see beyond, always beyond. This  is hope. And this is the prophecy that the Church gives us: we need men and women of hope, even in the midst of problems. Hope opens horizons, hope is clear, it is not a slave, it always finds some way to respond to a situation".

In the Gospel, the chief priests who asked Jesus by what authority he acts "have no horizons" they are "men locked in their calculations", "slaves of their rigidity. And human calculations they have "closed their hearts, shut out freedom", and "hope leads us to light".  How beautiful the freedom, generosity, hope of a man and a woman of the Church. Instead, how ugly and evil  the rigidity of a woman or a man of the Church, that clerical rigidity that has no hope. In this Year of Mercy, there are these two paths: those who hope in the mercy of God and know that God is the Father; God always forgives, always; who know that beyond the desert is the embrace of the Father's forgiveness. And, also, there are those who take refuge in slavery, in its rigidity, and know nothing of God's mercy. They were doctors, had studied, but their science did not save them”.

The Pope concluded by recounting the story of an experience he had in 1992 in Buenos Aires, during a Mass for the sick. He had been hearing confessions for many hours, when a very old woman, perhaps eighty, came to him, "with eyes that saw beyond, with these eyes full of hope". "And I said, 'Grandma, are you coming to confession?'. Because I was preparing to leave. 'Yes'. 'But you have no sins'. And she told me: 'Father, we all have sins'. 'But, maybe the Lord will not forgive them all?'. 'God forgives everything!', she told me. God forgives everything. 'How do you know?', I asked. 'Because if God does not forgive everything and everyone, the world would not exist'. These two types of people - the free, hopeful, who carry God's mercy and the closed, the legalistic, the righteous and  selfish, slaves of their rigidity – I remember this lesson that this elderly woman – she was Portuguese -  gave me, God forgives all, He is just waiting for you to approach".

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