disarm the heart to be peacekeepers

At the Angelus on the feast of All Saints, the Pope commented on the beatitudes, dramatically current due to the war. “We all want peace, but many times what we want is to be left alone. The Gospel reminds us instead that it does not fall from above but is built with commitment, collaboration and patience. He asked the faithful to pray for his upcoming apostolic trip to Bahrain.

Vatican City () – To become builders of peace, it is first necessary to “disarm the heart”, Pope Francis said today, addressing the faithful who were in Saint Peter’s Square to pray the Angelus on the feast of All Saints.

When he commented on the evangelical passage of the beatitudes that the liturgy proposes today, Francis explained that it is far from referring to “those brothers who in life were perfect, always linear, precise, starched.” Contrary to a certain “holiness of a holy card”, the Beatitudes of Jesus speak of “a life against the current and revolutionary”. And he stopped especially in the most dramatically relevant in today’s world, marked by war – “Blessed are those who work for peace” – the Pope underlined the difference with the peace that the world imagines. “We all want peace, but many times what we want is to be left in peace, not to have problems but tranquility. Jesus, on the other hand, does not call blessed those who are calm, but those who build peace.” peace, in fact, does not “rain from on high” but, like all construction, requires “commitment, collaboration and patience”. It does not come “with might and power.” The lives of Jesus and the saints “tell us that the seed of peace, in order to grow and bear fruit, must first die. Peace is not achieved by conquering or defeating someone, it is never violent, it is never armed.”

The first step in becoming peacekeepers, then, is to “disarm the heart.” “We are all equipped with aggressive thoughts, against each other, and with cutting words, and we think of defending ourselves with the barbed wire of complaints and the cement walls of indifference.” And we can only do it by receiving Jesus’ forgiveness and his peace, because “being peacekeepers, being saints, is not our ability, it is a gift that He gives us, it is a grace.”

Finally, the Pope asked himself: “Is it convenient to live like this? Isn’t that being a loser? It is Jesus who gives us the answer: those who work for peace “will be called children of God” (Mt 5:9). world seem out of place, because they do not give in to the logic of power and the strongest, but in Heaven they will be the closest to God, the most similar to Him. empty hands and wins the one who loves everyone and does no harm to anyone”.

After praying the Angelus, Pope Francis recalled the trip he is about to make to Bahrain starting on November 3. He explained that the central moment will be the participation in the International Forum for dialogue between East and West in which numerous Muslim personalities will be present and asked them to accompany him in prayer so that it will be a moment that helps to grow in brotherhood and peace. “of which our time is in desperate and urgent need.” In this sense, he also once again renewed the invitation not to forget Ukraine disfigured by war and to continue praying for peace.