God reaches out to sinners, Pope says in Angelus address

February 01, 2016

Christ announces that “no human condition can be a motive for exclusion,” Pope Francis said in his January 31 Angelus address.

Reflecting on the day’s Gospel reading (Lk. 4:21-30), Pope Francis said that “God goes out to meet the men and women of all times and places in the concrete situations in which they find themselves. He also comes out to meet us.”

“He is always the one who takes the first step,” the Pope continued. “He comes to visit us with his mercy, to lift us from the dust of our sin. He comes to reach out his hand to lift us from the abyss in which we’ve fallen with our pride and he invites us to welcome the consoling truth of the Gospel and to walk along the paths of righteousness.”

Noting that the residents of Nazareth rejected Christ’s words, Pope Francis told the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square that

certainly that day in the Nazareth synagogue, Mary, the Mother, was also there. We can imagine her heart pounding, a small anticipation of that which she would suffer beneath the Cross, seeing Jesus, there in the synagogue, first admired and then challenged, then insulted and later threatened with death. In her faith-filled heart, she guarded each thing. May she help us to turn from a god of miracles to the miracle of God, which is Jesus Christ.

 

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Further information:

• Angelus Domini 2016.01.31 (YouTube Vatican)
• Le parole del Papa alla recita dell’Angelus, 31.01.2016 (Holy See Press Office)
• Angelus Address: On God Coming to Meet Us (Zenit)