Faith is not a transactional relationship with God, pope says at Angelus

Friday, Oct. 15, 2021

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — People should ask themselves whether their faith has become a “commercial relationship” with God or if it is a relationship built on freedom, love and generosity, Pope Francis said.

Faith, he said, “is not a cold, mechanical ritual,” a “quid pro quo” in which people must do something to obtain something in return.

People need to ask, “What is faith for me? If it is mainly a duty or a bargaining chip, we are off track, because salvation is a gift and not a duty; it is free and cannot be bought,” the pope said, speaking to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus address Oct. 10.

The pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading of Jesus setting out on a journey and encountering a rich man who asked him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

The pope said the verbs the man uses, “must do” and “inherit,” show he sees religious belief as “a duty, a doing so as to obtain; I do something to get what I need. But this is a commercial relationship with God, a quid pro quo.”

Jesus shows the need to go from a sense of duty to an attitude of loving and freely giving, he said.

The “do nots” of the Ten Commandments lead to the positive action of “Go, sell, give, follow me,” he said. “Faith cannot be limited to ‘do not,’ because Christian life is a ‘yes,’ a ‘yes’ of love. ... A faith without giving, without gratuitousness, without works of charity, makes us sad in the end,” the pope said. 

If people feel their faith has become “tired” or they want to “reinvigorate it,” he said, “look for God’s gaze: sit in Adoration, allow yourself to be forgiven in Confession, stand before the crucified one. In short, let yourself be loved by him.”