Pope Francis: The joy that comes from God does not wear out

“A little chaos is needed,” said Pope Francis as a group of children gathered around him at the beginning of Wednesday’s General Audience.

From St. Peter’s Square, under the gaze of these children and the pilgrims who listened to him from the esplanade, the Holy Father explained the meaning of the fruits that the Holy Spirit grants, changing the usual tone of his catechisms and addressing especially the smaller.

At the beginning, he recalled some fruits listed by Saint Paul such as love, joy and peace, magnanimity, affability, kindness and trust, meekness and temperance.

Unlike the charismas, which the Spirit grants to whomever and whenever he wants for the good of the Church, “the fruits of the Spirit are the result of a collaboration between grace and freedom,” the Pontiff stressed.

Among these fruits, Pope Francis highlighted joy. He stated that “with Jesus Christ joy is always born and reborn” and highlighted that although sometimes there are “sad moments,” there is always peace.

“Joy, the fruit of the Spirit, has in common with any other human joy a certain feeling of fullness and satisfaction, which makes us wish it would last forever. However, we know from experience that that does not happen, because everything down here happens quickly,” he continued.

In this context, the Holy Father cited youth, health, strength, well-being, friendships, love… qualities that, even if “they do not pass quickly, after a while they are no longer enough, or even become boring.”

This is due, according to the Pontiff, to the restlessness of the heart. Quoting Saint Augustine, he stressed that we are made for the Lord and that “our heart is restless” until it rests in Him.

For this reason, he recalled that evangelical joy, unlike any other joy, “can be renewed every day and become contagious.”

He also pointed out that the joy that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit “is not only not subject to the inevitable wear and tear of time, but is multiplied by sharing it with others.”

Next, he remembered Saint Philip Neri, known as the “apostle of Rome”, who went down in history as the saint of joy.

He remarked that this saint “felt such a love for God that sometimes it seemed like his heart was going to burst in his chest. His joy was, in the fullest sense, a fruit of the Spirit.”

Based on the example of the holy founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, who “forgave everything and always forgave,” he recalled that “God forgives everything, God always forgives. And this is the joy, being forgiven by God. To priests, to confessors, I always say: forgive everything, do not command too much. Forgive everything and always.”

Finally, he stressed that “you cannot communicate with long faces and a gloomy countenance, but with the joy of someone who found the hidden treasure and the precious pearl.”

At the end of the General Audience, during the greeting to the pilgrims, Pope Francis addressed the little ones to invite them to pray for the children of Ukraine who suffer because of the war, especially due to the conditions of the “harsh winter.” .

The Holy Father also turned his gaze to the situation in the Holy Land, and asked for peace to be made. “Let us pray for peace,” he exhorted before giving his blessing.