POPE FRANCIS

POPE FRANCIS

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Saint Peter's Square
Wednesday, 2 March 2016

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In these weekly catecheses inspired by the present Holy Year of Divine Mercy, we have often reflected on God’s fatherly love and forgiveness. The Prophets present this love also as involving correction, a summons to conversion and the renewal of the Covenant. Every parent knows the challenge of helping children to grow in freedom and responsibility. In the Scriptures, God expresses his dismay at the rejection of his love, as seen in the disobedience and sin of his children. If he chastizes his people, it is to move them to repentance and conversion. In his mercy, he asks them to turn back to him with all their hearts and to receive a righteousness that is itself his gift. God is pleased, Isaiah tells us, not by ritual sacrifice but by rejecting evil and practising justice. Though our sins be like scarlet, he will make them white as snow. May all of us be open, during this year of grace, to our heavenly Father’s merciful invitation to come back to him and to experience this miracle of his love and forgiveness.

The Holy Father:

Saluto i pellegrini di lingua inglese presenti all’odierna Udienza, specialmente quelli provenienti da Irlanda, Camerun e Stati Uniti d’America. Con fervidi auguri che il presente Giubileo della Misericordia sia per voi e per le vostre famiglie un tempo di grazia e di rinnovamento spirituale, invoco su voi tutti la gioia e pace del Signore Gesù. Dio vi benedica!

After the Holy Father reads the above greeting in Italian, the speaker says:

I greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, including those from Ireland, Cameroon and the United States. With prayerful good wishes that the present Jubilee of Mercy will be for you and your families a moment of grace and spiritual renewal, I invoke upon all of you joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. God bless you all!