VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Christians must learn to expect and recognize God’s consolation and hold dear the peace and tranquility it leaves behind, Pope Francis said.
The Lord’s consolation touches one’s inner being “and moves you and gives you a boost of love, faith and hope, and it also makes you cry for (your) own sins,” the pope said in a morning homily Sept. 25.
True consolation from God isn’t “amusement,” which is why it is important to be able to recognize true solace, “because there are false prophets who seem to console us and instead deceive us,” he said during an early morning Mass in the chapel of his residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
One can still look at turmoil and Christ’s passion and cry with him, and yet be able to feel and recognize God’s presence, which “elevates your soul to the things of heaven, of God and it quiets the soul in the Lord’s peace,” he said.
The pope asked people to remember to thank God in prayer for always being there to help them “move forward, to hope, to carry the cross.”
The Lord “will let us feel his presence” all the time, in moments of weakness or strength, as long as people know how to wait with humility and always be open and striving for God and not be a “closed” Christian who has put their life in “storage” and doesn’t know what to do.
