Pope Francis: ‘In Jesus’ hands we participate in the building of the Church’
August 28, 2017
During his August 27 Angelus address, Pope Francis reflected on the day’s Gospel reading (Mt. 16:13-20) and said that “in Jesus’ hands we participate in the building of the Church.”
As with St. Peter in the Gospel, so “also with us today, Jesus wishes to continue to build His Church, this house with solid foundation but where cracks aren’t lacking, and which has continuous need of being repaired, always,” the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
“No small stone is useless, rather, in Jesus’ hands it becomes precious, because He gathers it, looks at it with great tenderness, works on it with His Spirit, and puts it in the right place, which He has always thought of and where it can be more useful to the entire edifice,” Pope Francis continued.
He added:
Moreover, today’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus also wanted for His Church a visible center of communion in Peter—even he isn’t a large stone, he is a small stone, but taken by Jesus he becomes center of communion—in Peter and in those that would succeed him in the same primatial responsibility, which from the beginning were identified in the Bishops of Rome, the city where Peter and Paul gave the witness of blood.
We entrust ourselves to Mary, Queen of the Apostles, Mother of the Church. She was in the Cenacle, next to Peter, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and pushed them to go out to proclaim to all that Jesus is the Lord. May our Mother support and accompany us today with her intercession, so that we realize fully that unity and that communion for which Christ and the Apostles prayed and gave their life.
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