‘Raise your head high’

“Jesus’ invitation is this: raise your head high and keep your hearts light and awake,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address on the first Sunday of Advent.

“If worries weigh down our hearts and induce us to close in on ourselves, Jesus, on the contrary, invites us to lift up our heads, to trust in his love that wants to save us and that draws close to us in every situation of our existence; he asks us to make room for him in order to find hope again.

“And so, let us ask ourselves: is my heart weighed down by fear, worries and anxieties about the future? Do I know how to look at daily events and the vicissitudes of history with God’s eyes, in prayer, with a broader horizon? Or do I let myself be overcome by despondency?”

On palliative care

Addressing French MPs on November 30, seven months after the Macron administration proposed legalising euthanasia, the pope said:

“As you know, people at the end of life need to be supported by assistants who are faithful to their vocation, which is that of providing assistance and relief even while not being able to cure. Words are not always necessary, but taking a sick person by the hand does a great deal of good and not only to the sick person, but to us too.”

Doctors exist to heal

Speaking to a delegation from the University of Naples, Pope Francis said:

“If it neglects human dignity, medicine runs the risk of lending itself to the interests of the market and ideology, instead of devoting itself to the good of nascent life, of suffering life, of destitute life. The doctor exists to heal from evil: always cure!

“No life is to be discarded. ‘But this person won’t make it…’. Accompany him or her to the end. I urge you to foster a science always at the service of the person.”

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)