SOME THINK Pope Francis is too modern for a pontiff , but he can really be a Thomas a Kempis. Vatican News confirms this, reporting him warning in a recent morning Mass homily that “rivalry and vainglory” could sow division and conflict in society and that Jesus is clear on His teaching for us “not to do things out of selfinterest” and for us not to choose friendships on the basis of convenience.
Sounds familiar? It could be because our daily lives follow the contour of the modern mantra, “learn to love yourself.” Motives that revolve around self-love are particularly active among politicians, some of whom admit that in politics, there are no permanent friends. And lower creatures in the category of ordinary people have joined their rank.
But the Pope, in his wisdom, knows well how self-interest has become overwhelming. In our country as in many others, corruption and lawlessness generate self-preoccupied millionaires and billionaires whose wealth buy respect, legitimacy and power and siphoning off what remains of the morals of the poor who are only too willing to get a share of the crumbs of their wealth and bask in the pomp of their power.
And so, it is gratifying to hear Pope Francis speak on the subject. He explained Jesus’ teaching is clear: “do not do things out of [self-] interest,” do not choose your friendships on the basis of convenience.
He said that reasoning on the basis of one’s own “advantage” is a “form of selfishness, segregation and self-interest” whilst Jesus’ message “is exactly the opposite.”
And referring to the first reading in which St. Paul speaks to the Philippians, he urged the faithful to “do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory” but to humbly regard others as more important than themselves, Vatican News reported.
“Rivalry is ugly: you can perpetrate it openly, in a direct way, or with white gloves. But it always aims to destroy the other and to ‘raise oneself up’ by diminishing the other.” Rivalry, he said, stems from self-interest.
The Pope also said that equally harmful is someone who prides himself on being superior to others.
This attitude, he said, destroys communities and families: “Think of the rivalry between siblings for the father’s inheritance for example”, noting that this has become not uncommon in our times.
Christians, Pope Francis said, must follow the example of the Son of God, cultivating “gratuitousness”: doing good without expecting or wanting to be repaid, sowing unity and abandoning “rivalry or vainglory”.
The Pope also said that “building peace with small gestures paves a path of harmony throughout the world. When we read of wars of the famine of children in Yemen caused by the conflict there, we think: that’s far away, poor children… why don’t they have food?”
“The same war is waged at home and in our institutions” he warned, “stemming from rivalry: that’s where war begins! And that’s where peace must be made: in the family, in the parish, in the institutions, in the workplace, always seeking unanimity and harmony and not one’s own interest.”
