Adoration awakens love for the poor and commitment to justice, Pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the eyes of the world, it would seem “absurd” to begin helping the poor and fighting for justice by spending time in adoration before the Eucharist, Pope Francis has said. the order has existed for 100 years.

“Faced with immense needs and with almost no resources at their disposal, what sense did it make to tell the sisters to kneel in adoration and reparation,” the pope said Aug. 25 as he joined in a centennial celebration. of the Sisters Disciples of Jesus in the Eucharist.

But the practice worked, Pope Francis told the sisters and their aides at the meeting in the Vatican audience hall.

The prayers and adoration of the first members of the congregation “generated a contagious force, which quickly led them to undertake and promote works of material, cultural and spiritual redemption far exceeding all expectations”, he said. he declares.

Amidst the extreme poverty of Tricarico, in the southern region of Italy, after the First World War and during a major flu epidemic, the sisters “awakened the faith and commitment of families and parish communities” , founded schools and helped restore people’s dignity “too often and too much”. long oppressed by inhuman living conditions and by the contempt and indifference of the surrounding world, which saw in them only the rejects of society.

“They have unleashed another ‘war’, that against poverty, against injustice, and they have spread another epidemic, that of love,” Pope Francis said.

“The Lord continues to call you to go where they have gone,” he told the sisters, who now minister throughout Italy and in Mexico, Brazil, Rwanda, Mozambique, the Philippines , Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Vietnam.

These ministries, he said, “are not lacking in challenges”, which is why it is essential that they continue to begin by “stopping before Jesus in the Eucharist, the broken bread and the washing master the disciples’ feet.

Pope Francis has asked sisters to spend time kneeling before the tabernacle and, like Jesus, to have “arms always open to your brothers and sisters.”

Copyright © 2023 Catholic News Service/American Conference of Catholic Bishops

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