believing is not an idea, but a heart changed by Jesus

The conversion of Saint Paul as the axis of today’s general audience in Saint Peter’s Square. “Becoming a Christian is not a make-up, which only changes your face.” Francis’ prayer for migrant victims of a fire at a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Vatican City () – “Becoming a Christian is not a make-up that only changes your face, your appearance. If you are truly a Christian, your heart has changed.” Pope Francis said this morning addressing the faithful during the general audience in Saint Peter’s Square.

Continuing his catechetical cycle on the theme of zeal in evangelization, the pontiff began a series of reflections on some figures who have given exemplary witness in this regard. And the first name is certainly that of the Apostle Paul: before his conversion, the young Saul, as he was still called, “was already zealous,” Francis observed, “but Christ converted his zeal: from the Law to the Gospel. What “What changed was not a simple idea or conviction: it was the encounter with the risen Lord that transformed his entire being. Paul’s humanity, his passion for God and His glory are not annulled, but transformed, converted by the Holy Spirit.”

The Pontiff explained: “We serve the Lord with our humanity, with our prerogatives and our characteristics, but what changes everything is not an idea, but real life, as Paul himself says: ‘If one is in Christ, it is a new creature’ (2 Cor 5, 17). “If you are a Christian only for appearances, this is not the case”, he added afterwards, “make-up Christians, no. The real change is of the heart.”

In this sense – he continued – “passion for the Gospel is not a matter of understanding or studies, which are useful but do not generate it, but rather it means going through the same experience of fall and resurrection that Saul/Paul lived and that is at the origin of the transfiguration of his apostolic impulse”.

In this profound change in Saint Paul, the Pope also underlined another aspect: “a kind of paradox occurs in him: since he considers himself just before God, he then feels authorized to persecute, arrest, even kill, as in the case of Stephen; but when, enlightened by the risen Lord, he discovers that he has been ‘a blasphemer and a violent one’ (cf. 1 Tim 1:13), then he begins to be truly capable of love”.

Hence the question that he addresses to all of us today: “What does Jesus mean to me? Have I let him into my heart – Francis asked – or do I only have him at hand but I don’t let him in so much? Have I allowed myself to be changed by He? Or Jesus is just an idea, a theology that goes forward… This is zeal: when one meets Jesus he feels the fire like Paul and he must preach Jesus, he must talk about Jesus, he must help people, he must do good things.” Otherwise, one remains only an “ideologue of Christianity” and this does not serve for salvation. “May the Lord help us to find Jesus, to meet Jesus,” he concluded, “and may this Jesus change our lives from within and help us to help others.”

Next, in his greeting to the Spanish-speaking faithful, Francis invited them to pray for the victims of “a tragic fire” that broke out last night in Ciudad Juárez, inside a migrant detention center. At least 39 people were killed, mostly Guatemalan citizens. The Pope expressed his sorrow and invoked consolation for the families of the victims. Finally, he directed the usual thought of him to the “martyred Ukraine”, inviting them to persevere in prayer for peace.