VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While all Christians are called to help those in need, they must fight against the temptation of boasting about their gifts of charity to seek attention, Pope Francis said.
Before praying the Angelus prayer with about 20,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 12, the pope said that the Gospel story of the poor widow who gave her last two coins as an offering helps Christian men and women today to “strip ourselves of the superfluous in order to do what really counts and to remain humble.”
“When we are tempted by the desire to make an impression and to rack up points for our altruistic gestures, when we are too interested in what others see and – allow me to use the word – when we are like ‘peacocks,’ let us think of this woman,” he said.
Reflecting on the Sunday Gospel reading, the pope said that Jesus unmasked “the perverse mechanism” of the scribes’ ostentatious behavior of praying so that others may see them and use God “to credit themselves as defenders of his law.”
This attitude of superiority and vanity, he said, “leads them to have contempt for those who count very little and are in a disadvantaged economic position, such as the widow.”
The widow’s gesture of humility does not go unnoticed by Jesus, who uses her selfless act to teach his disciples about the importance of “the total gift of self,” he said.
“The Lord’s scales are different from ours,” the pope said. “God doesn’t measure the quantity but the quality; he scrutinizes the heart and looks at the purity of the intentions.”
Pope Francis said that Christians must “shun ritualism and formality” and instead learn to humbly express gratitude by imitating the poor widow.
“We don’t know her name, but we know her heart,” the pope said. “We will certainly find her in heaven” because her heart is “what counts before God.”
At that morning’s Mass, the pope spoke about bishops.
A bishop must be “blameless” and at the service of God, not of cliques, assets and power, especially if he is ever to “set right” what needs to be done for the Church, Pope Francis said. A bishop must always “correct himself and ask himself, ‘Am I a steward of God or a businessman?’” the pope said in his homily during Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae Nov. 12, the feast of St. Josaphat, 17th-century bishop and martyr.
The pope’s homily looked at the day’s first reading from St. Paul’s Letter to Titus (1:1-9) describing the qualities and role of a bishop. The apostle underlines how a bishop must be a steward or “administrator of God, not of assets, power and cliques,” the pope said.
Most of all, he said, a bishop must be “blameless,” the same quality God asked of Abraham when he said, “walk in my presence and be blameless.” It is a quality that is the cornerstone of every leader, he added.
According to the apostle, a bishop must not be licentious, rebellious, arrogant, irritable, a drunkard, greedy or obsessed with money. A bishop with even just one of these defects, the pope said, is “a calamity for the Church.”
A bishop must be hospitable, temperate, just and holy; he must have self-control, love the good and be faithful to the Word, to the true message as it was taught, the apostle says. If this is what a bishop should be, the pope said, then “would it be wonderful to ask these questions at the beginning, when inquiries are made to elect bishops? To know whether one may keep going with other inquiries?”
Above all, the pope said, a bishop “must be humble, meek and a servant, not a prince.”
This is “the word of God” that comes from the time of St. Paul and isn’t something recent from the Second Vatican Council, the pope added.
The Church can only “set right” what needs corrected when it has bishops who have these qualities, he said.
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