Pope Francis: Its time to improve our social love

Screenshot 2/9/2020

Source: Vatican News

During his General Audience today, with pilgrims gathered in the San Damaso courtyard, Pope Francis focussed his teaching on the 'common good', saying "it's time to improve our social love."

Continuing his reflections on'Healing the World," Pope Francis said, we can emerge from the coronavirus crisis better than before "if we all seek the common good together." At the same time, he regretted that we are beginning to see "partisan interests emerging," with some people seeking to take advantage of the crisis for selfish purposes.

"The Christian response to the pandemic and to the consequent socio-economic crisis is based on love, especially the love of God for us. We in turn are called to love everyone - not only our friends and family, but even our enemies. This is difficult, the Pope acknowledged, but it is an "art that can be learned and improved."

Love, he continued, not only helps us build personal relationships, but also allows "social, cultural, and economic relationships to flourish, allowing us to construct a 'civilization of love'," Pope Francis said, using an expressing often stated by Popes Paul VI and St John Paul II.

The current crisis is helping us to see that the good of each person individually, is tied up with the common good of society, as a whole and vice versa. "A virus that does not recognise barriers, borders, or cultural or political distinctions must be faced with a love without barriers, borders or distinctions."

If, on the other hand, solutions to the crisis are tinged with selfishness or egoism, the Pope said, "we may perhaps emerge from the coronavirus crisis, but certainly not from the human and social crisis that the virus has brought to light and accentuated." Instead, everyone - and Christians in particular - have a duty to work to promote the common good.

Pope Francis admitted that politics often has a bad reputation, and perhaps not without reason. A "good politics is possible," though, he insisted, when it "puts the human person and the common good at the centre of its duty." This calls for everyone, but especially those with social and political commitments and duties, to root their actions "in ethical principles," and nourish them "with social and political love."

Pope Francis said, "Christians, in a particular way the laity, are called to give good example of this and can do it thanks to the virtue of charity, cultivating its intrinsic social dimension."

"Now, is the "time to improve our social love, with everyone's contribution," the Pope said. "Everyone must do their part, with no one excluded.. Thus, through our gestures, even the most humble ones, something of the image of God that we bear with us will be made visible, because God is the Trinity, God is love."

With God's help, Pope Francis said, "we can heal the world," if we all work together "for the common good."

Read the official text of Pope Francis' address here: http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/09/09/200909a.html

Watch the Audience on the Vatican Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AULIb79wUZs