Catholics should speak “the language of truth in love”, not the language of hypocrisy, the Pope said at Mass this morning.
In his homily in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae at the Vatican, he said: “Hypocrisy is the very language of corruption. And when Jesus speaks to his disciples, he says: ‘Let your language be ‘Yes, yes! No, no.’ Hypocrisy is not a language of truth, because the truth is never given alone. Never! It is always given with love! There is no truth without love. Love is the first truth.
“If there is no love, there is no truth. They want a true enslaved to their interests. There is a love, of sorts: it is love of self, love for oneself. That narcissist idolatry that leads them to betray others, that leads them to abuse of trust.”
Continuing his reflection on today’s Gospel reading, Mark 12:13-17, he said: “Let us think closely today: What is our language? Do we speak in truth, with love, or do we speak with that social language to be polite, even say nice things, which we do not feel? Let our language be evangelical brothers and sisters! Then these hypocrites that start out with flattery, adulation and all of that, end up, through false witnesses, with accusing the very ones they had flattered.
“Let us ask the Lord today that our language be the language of the simple, the language of a child, the language of the children of God, the language of truth in love. ”
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