Pope Francis: Jesus Christ’s life ended in failure, ‘failure of the cross’

And it diminishes the wonder of our first encounter with Christ. We can get caught up in measuring the value of our apostolic works by the standards of efficiency, good management and outward success, which govern the business world.

 

Not that these things are unimportant, of course. But we have been entrusted with a great responsibility, and this is why god’s people rightly expect accountability from us but the true worth of our apostolate is measured by the value it has in god’s eyes, to see and evaluate things from god’s perspective, calls for constant conversion in the first days and years of our vocation and, need I say, it demands great humility.

 

The cross shows us a different way of measuring success. Ours is to plant the seeds. God sees to the fruits of our labors. And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and not produce fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus Christ and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, the failure of the cross.

 

Another danger — another danger emerges when we become jealous of our free time, when we think that surrounding ourselves with worldly comforts help us to serve better. The problem with this way of reasoning is that it can blunt the power of god’s daily call to conversion, to encounter with him.

 

Slowly but surely, it diminishes our spirit of sacrifice, our spirit of renunciation and our spirit of hard work. It also alienates people who suffer material poverty and who are forced to make greater sacrifices than those that we make ourselves.

 

Read More: Pope Francis: Jesus Christ’s life ended in failure, ‘failure of the cross’ – The Global Dispatch