Pontifical house preacher: true imperfection is the lack of love, not fragility

Capuchino friar Roberto Pasolini, 53, and since November 2024, preacher of the Pontifical House, said that true imperfection is “the lack of love” and not “fragility.”

“We often obsess us having to be perfect, but the Gospel teaches us that true imperfection is not fragility, but the lack of love,” he explained during the first of the meditations, which he directed yesterday Sunday before the cardinals of the Roman curia in the classroom Paul VI of the Vatican.

“True purification is not to become perfect, but to fully accept ourselves in the light of God’s love, overcoming the illusion that we have to be ‘others’ to deserve salvation,” he said.

He also called to “rediscover the value and beauty of eternal life” and “to return his real meaning.”

A task that, he said, “is even more urgent in this Holy Year of the Jubilee and at the time of deep suffering that the Holy Father crosses.”

Pope Francis, 88, is still admitted to the Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital in Rome for 25 days, but could follow these reflections by videoconference, although his image could not be seen.

Pasolini found that the faith of the Church, founded on the resurrection of Christ, has always offered the world “the hope of a life beyond death.” However, he regretted that this promise has “blurred” and today “is not so much answered and ignored.”

That is why he called the believers to deal with “this indifference.”

The reflections raised to those who direct the agencies and offices that help Pope Francis in the government of the Catholic Church and the administration of the Holy See were based on the issue of eternal life.

To do this, Pasolini extracted some synthetic formulations of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CIC), which presents death not as an end, but as a step to eternal life, in communion with Christ.

“This concept has its roots in the epistle to the Romans, where St. Paul affirms that, through baptism, we join the death and resurrection of Christ, thus accessing the new life,” said Pasolini.

“Death, according to the Catechism, is the time when the particular judgment is made, evaluating the acceptance or rejection of God’s grace,” he added.

However, he made it clear that salvation is not only reserved for those who have formally met Christ.

“The Second Vatican Council recognizes that those who follow their conscience in a sincere search for God can access eternal life. The CIC emphasizes that the final judgment is not based on mere exterior acts, but on the love lived, echoing the thought of San Juan de la Cruz: ‘In the afternoon of life, we will be judged by love,’ ”he said in this regard.

Thus, he said that the ultimate fate of man is divided into three possibilities: paradise, eternal condemnation (hell) and final purification (purgatory).

Pasolini stopped in each of them. He pointed out that paradise represents “the full realization of the human being, an eternal communion with Christ in which each person finds their true identity.”

Hell, on the other hand, is described as “the definitive separation of God.”

In any case, he warned that the Church “has never affirmed with certainty that no one is convicted there.”

Purgatory, opportunity to reconcile with the infinite love of God

As for purgatory, he said that it is considered “a purification process for those who, although in the grace of God, are not yet prepared for heaven, and perhaps in this last ‘destiny’ is the originality of Christian revelation.”

In this way, he assured that purgatory means, in a way, the possibility of a last moment of purification, that is, the opportunity to reconcile until the end with the infinite love of God.

He also stated that the “Church’s reflection on the eternity of life does not intend to generate fear, but to feed hope, stressing that our destiny depends on the freedom with which we choose to live in love.”

In this regard, he assured that purgatory can be seen as the last chance “to free us from fear not to be enough, to serenity what we are, making him a place of relationship and communion with others.”

For Pasolini, purgatory can be understood as the “moment in which we finally stop wanting to demonstrate something to God and simply let ourselves love.”

Eternity, therefore, “is not only a future prize, but a reality that begins here, to the extent that we learn to live in love and communion with Christ,” he said

Finally, he stressed that death “is not a defeat, but the moment in which we will finally see the face of God and we will discover that the end was only the beginning.”