Message of the Holy Father Francis for the LIV World Day of Social Communications, 01/24/2020
Message of the Holy Father Francis for the LIV World Day of Social Communications, 01/24/2020
So you can count and record in memory (cf. Ex 10,2)
Life becomes history
I want to dedicate this year's Message to the theme of storytelling, because I believe that in order not to get lost we need to breathe the truth of good stories: stories that build, not destroy; stories that help rediscover the roots and strength to move forward together. In the midst of the confusion of the voices and messages that surround us, we need a human narrative that tells us about ourselves and the beauty that we possess. A narration that knows how to look at the world and events with tenderness; Let him tell that we are part of a living tissue; that reveals the interweaving of the threads with which we are united with each other.
1. Knitting stories
Man is a narrative being. From childhood we are hungry for stories like we are hungry for food. Whether in the form of stories, novels, movies, songs, news ..., stories influence our lives, although we are not aware of it. We often decide what is right or wrong to do based on the characters and stories we have assimilated. The stories teach us; they capture our convictions and our behaviors; They can help us understand and say who we are.
Man is not only the only being who needs to dress to cover his vulnerability (cf. Gn 3,21), but he is also the only being who needs to “cover” himself with stories to guard his own life. We weave not only clothes, but also stories: in fact, the human capacity to “weave” involves both fabrics and texts. The stories of each era have a common "loom": the structure foresees "heroes", also current, who face difficult situations to carry out a dream, fight against evil pushed by a force that gives them courage, that of the love. Immersing ourselves in the stories, we can find heroic motivations to face the challenges of life.
Man is a narrative being because he is a being in fulfillment, who discovers and enriches himself in the plots of his days. But, from the beginning, our story is threatened: in history, evil winds.
2. Not all stories are good
"On the day that you eat of it, […] you will be like God" (cf. Gn 3,5). The temptation of the serpent introduces into the plot of the story a knot that is difficult to undo. "If you have, you will become, you will reach ..." whispers still today who uses the so-called storytelling for instrumental purposes. How many stories drug us, convincing us that we continually need to have, possess, consume to be happy. We are hardly aware of how we become hungry for gossip and gossip, how much violence and falsehood we consume. Often, on the looms of communication, instead of constructive stories, which are a binder of social ties and cultural fabric, destructive and provocative stories are manufactured, which wear and break the fragile threads of coexistence. Gathering unsubstantiated information, repeating trivial and falsely persuasive speeches, harassing with hateful proclamations, human history is not woven, but man is stripped of dignity.
But while stories used for instrumental and power purposes have a short life, a good story is capable of transcending the limits of space and time. At a distance of centuries it is still current, because it feeds life. In an age when counterfeiting is becoming more sophisticated and reaching exponential levels (deepfake), we need wisdom to receive and create beautiful, true and good stories. We need courage to reject those who are false and wicked. We need patience and discernment to rediscover stories that help us not lose the thread among the many lacerations of today; stories that bring to light the truth of who we are, even in the ignored heroism of everyday life.
3. The History of the stories
Sacred Scripture is a History of stories. How many experiences, peoples, people does he present to us! It shows us from the beginning a God who is creator and narrator at the same time. Indeed, he pronounces his Word and things exist (cf. Gen 1). Through his narration God calls things to life and, as a colophon, creates man and woman as his free interlocutors, generators of history with him. In a psalm, the creature says to the Creator: «You have created my entrails, you have woven me in the womb. I thank you because your works are admirable […] , you did not know my bones. When, in the occult, I was forming, and interweaving in the depths of the earth »(139,13-15). We are not born realized, but we constantly need to be "woven" and "embroidered". Life was given to us to invite us to continue weaving that "admirable work" that we are.
In this sense, the Bible is the great love story between God and humanity. At the center is Jesus: his story leads to the fulfillment of God's love for man and, at the same time, the story of man's love for God. Man will be called like this, from generation to generation, to tell and record in his memory the most significant episodes of this History of stories, those that can communicate the meaning of what happened.
The title of this Message is taken from the book of Exodus, a fundamental biblical account, in which God intervenes in the history of his people. In fact, when the children of Israel were enslaved they cried out to God, He heard them and remembered: «God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God noticed the children of Israel and appeared to them »(Ex 2, 24-25). Liberation from oppression springs from the memory of God, which takes place through signs and wonders. It is then that the Lord reveals to Moses the meaning of all these signs: «So that you can count [y grabar en la memoria] of your children and grandchildren […] the signs that I made in their midst. In this way you will know that I am the Lord »(Ex 10,2). The experience of the Exodus teaches us that the knowledge of God is transmitted above all by telling, from generation to generation, how He continues to make himself present. The God of life communicates by counting life.
Jesus himself spoke of God not with abstract discourses, but with parables, short stories, taken from everyday life. Here life becomes history and then, for those who listen to it, history becomes life: that narration enters the life of the listener and transforms it.
It is no coincidence that the Gospels are also stories. While they inform us about Jesus, they “perform” [1] us Jesus, they conform us to Him: the Gospel asks the reader to participate in the same faith to share the same life. The Gospel of John tells us that the Narrator par excellence - the Word, the Word - became a narration: "The only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has told it" (cf. Jn 1,18). I have used the term "counted" because the original exeghésato can be translated either as "revealed" than as "counted". God has personally interwoven into our humanity, thus giving us a new way of weaving our stories
4. A story that is renewed
The history of Christ is not the heritage of the past, it is our history, always current. It shows us that God cares so much about man, our flesh, our history, to the point of becoming man, flesh and history. It also tells us that there are no insignificant or small human stories. After God became history, all human history is, in some way, divine history. In the history of each man, the Father sees again the story of his Son who came down to earth. All human history has a dignity that cannot be suppressed. Therefore, humanity deserves stories that are at its height, at that dizzying and fascinating height to which Jesus raised it.
Saint Paul wrote: «You are a letter from Christ […] written not in ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on tables of hearts of flesh "(2 Cor 3,3). The Holy Spirit, the love of God, writes in us. And, by writing inside, it records the good in us, it reminds us of it. Re-cordar effectively means to carry the heart, "write" in the heart. By the work of the Holy Spirit, each story, even the most forgotten, even the one that seems to be written with the most twisted lines, can become inspired, can be reborn as a masterpiece, becoming an appendix to the Gospel. Like Augustine's Confessions. Like The Story of the Pilgrim of Ignatius. Like the Story of a soul of Therese of the Child Jesus. Like The Bride and Groom, like The Karamazov Brothers. Like so many innumerable stories that have admirably staged the encounter between the freedom of God and that of man. Each of us knows different stories that smell like the Gospel, which have borne witness to the love that transforms life. These stories require that they be shared, told and lived in all ages, with all languages and by all means.
5. A story that renews us
In every great story ours comes into play. While we read Scripture, the stories of the saints, and also those texts that have known how to read the soul of man and bring out its beauty, the Holy Spirit is free to write in our hearts, renewing in us the memory of what we are in the eyes of God. When we remember the love that created us and saved us, when we put love in our daily stories, when we weave the plots of our days with mercy, then we turn the page. We are no longer tied to memories and sadness, linked to a sick memory that imprisons our hearts, but opening ourselves to others, we open ourselves to the very vision of the Narrator. Telling God our story is never useless; Although the chronicle of events remains unchanged, they change the meaning and perspective. To count ourselves to the Lord is to enter into his gaze of compassionate love towards us and towards others. We can narrate to Him the stories we live, lead people, entrust situations to Him. With Him we can knot the fabric of life, mending the torn and tattered. How much we all need it!
With the Narrator's gaze - the only one that has the final point of view - we then approach the protagonists, our brothers and sisters, actors on our side of today's history. Yes, because nobody is an extra on the world stage and the history of each one is open to the possibility of change. Even when we count evil we can learn to make room for redemption, we can recognize the dynamism of good in the midst of evil and make room for it.
Therefore, it is not a matter of following the logic of storytelling, nor of making or advertising, but of remembering what we are in the eyes of God, of bearing witness to what the Spirit writes in our hearts, of revealing to each one that his story contains wonderful works. To do this, we entrust ourselves to a woman who wove the humanity of God into her womb and, says the Gospel, wove everything that happened to her. The Virgin Mary kept everything, meditating on it in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19). Let us ask for help to the one who knew how to untie the knots of life with the soft force of love:
Oh Mary, woman and mother, you wove the divine Word in your womb, you narrated with your life the magnificent works of God. Listen to our stories, keep them in your heart and make yours those stories that nobody wants to hear. Teach us to recognize the good thread that guides history. Look at the cluster of knots in which our life has become entangled, paralyzing our memory. Your delicate hands can undo any knot. Woman of the Spirit, mother of trust, inspire us too. Help us build stories of peace, stories of the future. And show us the way to walk together.
Vatican, January 24, 2020, feast of Saint Francis de Sales.
FRANCISCUS
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[1] Cf. Benedict XVI, Letter enc. Spe salvi, 2: «The Christian message was not only“ informative ”, but“ performative ”. This means that the Gospel is not only a communication of things that can be known, but a communication that involves actions and changes life.
* The LIV World Day of Social Communications is celebrated in many countries on Sunday May 24, solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord.