Pope Francis: how can we please God?

How, concretely, can we please God then? When you want to please a loved one, for example by giving them a gift, you must first know their tastes, to avoid that the gift is more appreciated by those who make it than those who receive it. When we want to offer something to the Lord, we find his tastes in the Gospel. Immediately after the passage we listened to today, He says: "All that you have done to one of these younger brothers of mine, you have done to me" (Mt 25,40). These younger brothers, beloved by him, are the hungry and the sick, the stranger and the prisoner, the poor and the abandoned, the suffering without help and the needy discarded. On their faces we can imagine his face imprinted; on their lips, even if closed by pain, his words: "This is my body" (Mt 26,26). In the poor Jesus knocks on our heart and, thirsty, asks us for love. When we overcome indifference and in the name of Jesus we spend ourselves for his younger brothers, we are his good and faithful friends, with whom he loves to entertain himself. God appreciates him so much, he appreciates the attitude we listened to in the first Reading, that of the "strong woman" who "opens her palms to the poor, extends her hand to the poor" (Pr 31,10.20). This is the real fortress: not clenched fists and folded arms, but industrious and outstretched hands towards the poor, towards the wounded flesh of the Lord.

There, in the poor, the presence of Jesus is manifested, who made himself poor as a rich man (cf. 2 Cor 8,9: XNUMX). This is why in them, in their weakness, there is a "saving force". And if in the eyes of the world they have little value, they are the ones who open the way to heaven, they are our "passport to heaven". For us it is an evangelical duty to take care of them, who are our true wealth, and to do so not only by giving bread, but also by breaking with them the bread of the Word, of which they are the most natural recipients. Loving the poor means fighting against all poverty, spiritual and material.

And it will do us good: bringing together those who are poorer than us will touch our lives. It will remind us of what really matters: love God and neighbor. Only this lasts forever, everything else passes; therefore what we invest in love remains, the rest vanishes. Today we can ask ourselves: "What matters to me in life, where do I invest?" In the wealth that passes, of which the world is never satisfied, or in the wealth of God, which gives eternal life? This choice is before us: to live to have on earth or to give to earn heaven. Because what is given is not valid for heaven, but what is given, and "whoever accumulates treasures for himself does not enrich himself with God" (Lk 12,21:XNUMX). We are not looking for the superfluous for us, but for the good for others, and we will not miss anything precious. May the Lord, who has compassion for our poverty and clothes us with his talents, give us the wisdom to seek what matters and the courage to love, not with words but with deeds.

Taken from the vatican.va website