Pope offers profoundly spiritual retreat

America Magzine writes “Pope Francis has not written an encyclical on the priesthood yet, but the profoundly spiritual retreat that he gave today on the central place of mercy in the life and mission of a priest could be considered just that.”

“As a Jesuit in Argentina he frequently gave retreats, and this morning, June 2, he returned to being retreat master when he spoke to thousands of priests and seminarians from all over the world who had come to Rome for the Jubilee of Priests.”

The third and final talk is now available.

Some excerpts…

So it is not about God showing me mercy for this or that sin, as if I were otherwise self-sufficient, or about us performing some act of mercy towards this or that person in need.  The grace we seek in this prayer is that of letting ourselves be shown mercy by God in every aspect of our lives and in turn to show mercy to others in all that we do.

I am going to propose a prayer about the woman whose sins were forgiven (Jn 8:3-11), to ask for the grace to be merciful in the confessional, and another prayer about the social dimension of the works of mercy.

I have always been struck by the passage of the Lord’s encounter with the woman caught in adultery, and how, by refusing to condemn her, he “fell short of” the Law.  …Sometimes I feel a little saddened and annoyed when people go straight to the last words Jesus speaks to her: “Go and sin no more”.  They use these words to “defend” Jesus from bypassing the law.  I believe that Christ’s words are of a piece with his actions.  He bends down to write on the ground as a prelude to what he is about to say to those who want to stone the woman, and he does so again before talking to her.  This tells us something about the “time” that the Lord takes in judging and forgiving.  The time he gives each person to look into his or her own heart and then to walk away.  In talking to the woman, the Lord opens other spaces: one is that of non-condemnation.   The Gospel clearly mentions this open space.  It makes us see things through the eyes of Jesus, who tells us: “I see no one else but this woman”.

Everybody has known good confessors. We have to learn from our good confessors, the ones whom people seek out, who do not make them afraid but help them to speak frankly, as Jesus did with Nicodemus.  If people come to confession it is because they are penitent; repentance is already present.  They come to confession because they want to change.  Or at least they want to want to change, if they think their situation is impossible.  Ad impossibilia nemo tenetur, as the old maxim goes: no one is obliged to do the impossible.

We have to learn from good confessors, those who are gentle with sinners, who after a couple of words understand everything, as Jesus did with the woman suffering from a haemorrhage, and straightaway the power of forgiveness goes forth from them.  The integrity of confession is not a mathematics problem.  Sometimes people feel less shame in confessing a sin than in stating the number of times they committed it.  We have to let ourselves be moved by people’s situation, which at times is a mixture of their own doing, human weakness, sin and insuperable conditionings.  We have to be like Jesus, who was deeply moved by the sight of people and their problems, and kept healing them, even when they “didn’t ask properly”, like that leper, or seemed to beat around the bush, like the Samaritan woman.  She was like a bird we have in South America: she squawked in one place but had her nest in another.

We have to learn from confessors who can enable penitents to feel amendment in taking a small step forwards, like Jesus, who gave a suitable penance and could appreciate the one leper who returned to thank him, on whom he bestowed yet more.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-francis-third-meditation-for-priests/#ixzz4AWVx9Psg