Tag: Francis

Implications of Entire Sanctification in the Pope’s New Year’s Day Message

The Pope, in his message today, discussed the critical requirement of new life through regeneration in Christ. However, the working of Christ within us is not only a personal event, but a relational event. The validity of that aspect cannot be debated or challenged. Christ within us means evidence of the Holy Spirit manifests itself in how we relate to one another, and even to the creation, at individual levels, community levels, and even national levels.

Pope Francis delivers quite a good message which actually summarizes what, in the Church of the Nazarene, we would call entire sanctification and what it looks like – especially in the fruits of love for one another. Love for one another can often be a challenge, but is evidence of God within us.

Click here for a link to the text; Francis’ words speak for themselves.

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

The prayer commonly attributed to the great 13th century Christian Saint of the catholic Church:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon:
where there is doubt, faith:
where there is despair, hope:
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Perhaps in praying and living these words in unity with the rest of the catholic Church, we may be a humble representative of God’s holy kingdom, empowered by the Spirit, with Christ as our leader, to a fallen world seeking the hope and healing that only the Father, the Son, and the Spirit can bring.

Amen.