Pope Francis urged people to reflect on whether they are sacrificing their serenity and freedom to be enslaved by money, power, and pleasure. Speaking in his Angelus address on June 9, the pope asked people to contemplate the temptations that can imprison us and the freedom found in Christ.
“If we let ourselves be conditioned by the quest for pleasure, power, money, or consensus, we become slaves to these things,” he said. “If instead we allow God’s freely-given love to fill us and expand our heart, and if we let it overflow spontaneously by giving it back to others with our whole selves without fear, calculation, or conditioning, then we grow in freedom and spread its good fragrance around us in our homes, in our families, and in our communities.”
In his speech from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the pope highlighted the many ways in which “Jesus was a free man.” Jesus was not enslaved by wealth but embraced “a poor life full of uncertainties, freely taking care of the sick and whoever came to ask him for help, without ever asking for anything in return.”
“He was free with regard to power,” Francis added. “Indeed, despite calling many to follow him, he never obliged anyone to do so, nor did he ever seek out the support of the powerful but always took the side of the least, teaching his disciples to do like-wise.” The Lord was also free from the need “for fame and approval, and for this reason, he never gave up speaking the truth,” he said. Pope Francis underlined that Jesus never gave up speaking the truth “even at the cost of not being understood or becoming unpopular – even to the point of dying on the cross.”