Rome Newsroom, Feb 7, 2024 / 09:17 am
Pope Francis continued his general audience catechetical series on vice and virtues on Wednesday by focusing on sorrow, observing that it can be “understood as a despondency of the soul, a constant affliction that prevents man from feeling joy at his own existence.”
During the Feb. 7 audience the pope observed that sorrow can assume a sinister and destructive form and could be understood as an “ailment of the soul” that “creeps into the soul and prostrates it in a state of despondency” and “must be fought resolutely.”
Sorrow can be particularly difficult for man to deal with as it “is linked to the experience of loss” and consequently “arises in the human heart when a desire or hope vanishes,” the Holy Father said to the faithful gathered in the Paul VI Audience Hall.
“In the heart of man, hopes arise that are sometimes dashed. It can be the desire to possess something that instead we are unable to obtain, but it can also be something important, such as an emotional loss,” the pope said. “When this happens, it is as if man’s heart falls from a precipice, and the sentiments he feels are discouragement, weakness of the spirit, depression, and anguish.”
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