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CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2024 / 13:30 pm
Papal preacher Father Roberto Pasolini urged Church leaders to embrace the quality of “littleness” ahead of the Christmas holiday, calling on the faithful to imitate Christ and arguing against the need to feel “important in the eyes of others.”
Pasolini, who was appointed to the role of papal preacher last month, told members of the Roman Curia on Dec. 20 that God “sees littleness not as a limitation but as a precious resource.”
He cited the teachings of Christ, who stipulated clearly that “only those who make themselves small, like little children, will enter the kingdom of God,” reported Catholic News Service (CNS), the news agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The preacher’s remarks came as part of Advent reflections given in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall. The Capuchin priest has given similar remarks regularly throughout the Advent season, with Friday’s address the last before Christmas on Dec. 25.
Pasolini pointed to the example of St. Francis of Assisi — from whom Pope Francis drew his pontifical name — as one who “took seriously this destiny of littleness.”
The earlier Francis “understood that the primary task of the Church was not just to do good for others but to allow others to do good for us,” Pasolini said, according to CNS.
Pride, the priest said, “has created a discomfort toward our littleness.”
“At first, we were all naked and unashamed, but now this littleness has become a source of embarrassment,” he said.
“The fear and shame of not being enough, of not being capable, drive us to assume roles and actions to feel important in the eyes of others.”
Pasolini urged leaders to “take the liberty to present ourselves with a little less fear and without the unnecessary shame of being smaller than what we once were, or perhaps even than what we thought we should be, to manifest ourselves as witnesses of the Gospel.”
“In Christ Jesus, we can present ourselves to one another and to God in one spirit, to share the same inheritance and to be partakers in the same promise through the Gospel,” he said.
Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.
