St. John the Baptist’s response to the Pharisees can give us a lot to think about, Francis said, including asking ourselves if we are like the Pharisees, who judge others, and think we have our lives under control, who think “that we don’t need God, or the Church, or our brothers or sisters on a daily basis.”
“Advent,” the pope continued, “is a moment of grace to take off our masks — every one of us has them — and line up with those who are humble, to be liberated from the presumption of the belief of being self-sufficient, to go to confess our sins, the hidden ones, and to welcome God’s pardon, to ask forgiveness from those whom we have offended.”
“This is how to begin a new life. There is only one way, the way of humility — to be purified from the sense of superiority, from formalism and hypocrisy, to see ourselves, along with our brothers and sisters, as sinners, and to see Jesus as the Savior who comes for us, not for the others, for us, just as we are, with our poverty, misery and failings, above all with our need to be raised up, forgiven and saved,” he said.
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