Emphasizing in his homily May 8 that harmony and unity in the church are evidence of the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis observed that, on the other hand, “A Church,where its people are always arguing and there are lobbies and people are betraying their brothers and sisters, is a Church where there is no Holy Spirit!”

Citing the Apostolic Fathers who settled the first major crisis in the Church at the “first ecumenical council” in Jerusalem (Acts 15) through prayer and dialogue, the Holy Father implied that Christians today should follow the Apostolic Fathers’ example. They should “discuss [the] issue but like brothers and sisters and not like enemies. They don’t form external lobbies in order to win; they don’t go to the civil authorities in order to win and they don’t kill in order to triumph. They seek the path of prayer and dialogue.”

Discussions within the Church are to seek unity and harmony, not to prove that your opinion is right and that others’ are wrong. The purpose, rather, should be to discern the way of the Spirit through prayer and dialogue and in a spirit of humility.

Pope Francis recognized that change in the Church is constant and healthy. “It’s the Spirit that creates change, that creates the momentum for going ahead, that creates new spaces, and that creates that wisdom which Jesus promised: ‘It will teach you!’ That is what discernment is all about – asking the Spirit to teach us.”

The Church is not a political body, nor is it a democracy. Efforts to lobby or to use media to win others to a particular point of view are not only misunderstanding the nature of the Church, but also are both prideful and presumptuous. It is God’s will, not ours, that we seek.

Calling for openness to dialogue, in his homily last Thursday, Pope Francis cautioned against stubbornness and hardness of heart that blinds us to the newness of God. “Obeying God means having the courage to change paths … obedience often brings us along a path that is not the one I think it should be, but along another path.”

Citing the example of the leaders of the community who ordered the disciples of Jesus to stop preaching the gospel to the people, to whom Peter responded, “We must obey God rather than men.” Those leaders “had studied the prophecies, they had studied the law … they knew everything … but they were incapable of recognizing the salvation of God.”

“The one who doesn’t know how to dialogue does not know God,” the Holy Father continued. The cause of this unwillingness to dialogue is “hardness of heart and of head … a closing in on oneself.” Such people, the Pope said “didn’t know to dialogue with God, because they didn’t know to pray to hear the voice of God, and they didn’t know to dialogue with others. … They interpreted how the law could be more precise, but they were closed to the signs of God in history.”

Cautioning that we must guard against making the same error, Pope Francis concluded asking for prayers “for the teachers, for the doctors, for those who teach the people of God, that they would not be closed in on themselves, that they would dialogue, and so save themselves from the wrath of God, which, if they do not change their attitude, will remain upon them.”

Let us pray that each of us, in obedience to God, open our hearts and our heads to the newness of God to be found in dialogue with others.

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Image credit: Pope Francis celebrates Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican April 5. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)