World’s Day of Migrants and Refugees (2)

“Charity cannot be neutral, antiseptic, indifferent, lukewarm or impartial! Charity is infectious, it excites, it risks and it engages! For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous! It is also about the face we want to give to our society and about the value of each human life. Many positive steps have been taken in different areas, especially in the developed countries, yet we cannot forget that the progress of our peoples cannot be measured by technological or economic advances alone. It depends above all on our openness to being touched and moved by those who knock at our door. Their faces debunk and shatter all those false idols that can take over and enslave our lives, idols blind to the lives and sufferings of others, idols that promise an illusory and fleeting happiness. How arid and inhospitable a city becomes, once it loses the capacity for compassion! A heartless society… a barren mother. You are not the marginalized; you are at the centre of the heart of the Church.”

Pope Francis