VATICAN CITY (AP) Pope Francis says restless hearts these days are seeking sure answers to life’s questions but don’t find them. “When we do, Nancy and I would like to teach them the importance of giving, of family and show them the value in spending time together”.
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The Magi, in their quest for truth, sought the explanation for a mysterious light from a star, the Pope remarks.
While the Catholic church observes the celebration as just one day, many Protestants devote six weeks to the season of Epiphany. They listened to a voice deep within, which led them to follow that light. They were later depicted as “three kings” and by tradition called Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, though the evangels do not state anything about their number, status or names, the TASR newswire wrote.
These Magi represent every man and woman throughout the world who are welcomed into God’s house, the pope said, noting that before Jesus, “all divisions of race, language and culture disappear: in that Child, all humanity discovers its unity”. “The church can not deceive herself into thinking that she shines with her own light”.
The Epiphany service at Christ the King took place on the second Sunday following Christmas – Jan. 3 – and Pilgrim Lutheran Church’s service will be tonight at 7 p.m. and will mark the first Epiphany service the church has conducted in the four years Galler has been pastor.
On Monday, he’ll deliver his annual speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican, generally considered the pope’s most important foreign policy speech of the year.
God’s ability to forgive “knows no limits” as His mercy frees people from bitterness and despair, Pope Francis said. This is the service of the Church, with the light that she reflects: to draw out the desire for God present in every heart. There is no other way. Mission is its vocation.
The pope asked people to pray that the Virgin Mary “help us turn our gaze away from ourselves, to let ourselves be guided by the star of the Gospel in order to encounter Jesus, and to know how to lower ourselves in order to adore him”.
Mary offers the world Jesus, who in turn, offers that forgiveness which “renews life, enables us once more to do God’s will and fills us with true happiness”, the pope said.
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“Woe to us if we let in” sin which always lies in wait “at the door”, he said. It is here, in the simplicity of Bethlehem, that the life of the Church is summed up.
