Christians are companions on journey for the wounded and lonely

By Andrea Tornielli – Lourdes

A common thread runs through Pope Leo XIV’s messages to the Church in France and throughout Europe. It points to the most appropriate attitude for Christians living in secularized societies, where large numbers of wounded people are searching for meaning in their lives.

In his homily at Vespers in Notre-Dame, the Successor of Peter recalled that the Church is called always to be “going forth,” precisely to remain faithful to the God of the Incarnation.

This characteristic should prevent the Christian community from becoming an enclave, a protected stronghold into which to retreat and shield itself from the age in which we live, with all its contradictions. This is a recurring temptation, especially today, when some argue that the only way to survive is to establish small communities of firmly convinced believers, effectively separated from the world.

Instead, Pope Leo XIV said, the Christian community is more like the ancient cathedral, becoming a place of welcome, respect, proclamation, and meaning offered to everyone. “Christ is already knocking at the door” of those who seem far away, and we need to discover him by welcoming those on the peripheries.

It is no coincidence that, in his homily, the Pope cited his predecessor Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium. Its echo can also be heard in these words: “A lack of resources does not hinder the mission, since it is God’s grace that fosters inner freedom and simplicity of life, so as to reflect a Gospel way of living.”

This message makes clear that bearing witness to the Gospel requires neither powerful structures and resources nor the marketing strategies of neo-proselytism.

Further significant insights into what it means to be a witness in our time came during the meeting with members of the Provincial Synodal Assembly, catechumens and neophytes.

Pope Leo explained the importance of welcoming and accompanying those whose “paths through life are more complex and less straightforward.” It is here, the Pope explained, that a style of closeness, compassion and tenderness takes on its full meaning, offering paths that respect the pace of those we encounter, “proceeding gradually, with care and in fraternal accompaniment.”

It means adopting the approach of “walking together”, enriching one another. Knowing how to offer companionship, how to walk through the night with those who are searching, without being swallowed up by the darkness: with patience and the ability to wait.

Just as St. Monica did with her son Augustine—an attitude Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described in 1981—regarding “leaving him free as an essential element in creating this space for life.” Even free to make mistakes.

St. Monica “knew how to wait… Through suffering, she learned to let him follow his own path, without coercion. She learned to bear the fact that his path was entirely different from the one she had envisaged for him in faith; yet she also learned to love him, to remain at his side, not to abandon him, while still allowing him the freedom to be himself. In this openness as she waited, allowing him the freedom to become himself—not imposing faith on him, but simply being there for him as a person, as a mother—this was precisely how she passed on the faith to him.”

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This ability to accompany others reflects the words Pope Leo spoke in his homily at Mass in Place de la Concorde: “Do not keep your faith in Jesus Christ to yourselves, but let it overflow to quench the thirst of those you meet and bring them fulfilment. It is up to you to bring hope wherever discouragement and spiritual dryness reign.”

In that same homily, before 800,000 people, the Bishop of Rome spoke in tones that were the very opposite of triumphalism or a desire for vindication, recalling that the Church herself needs conversion.

To heal the deep wounds caused by unfaithfulness and the “painful failings” within her, Christians need to place themselves humbly under God’s gaze, acknowledging their own mistakes.

For it is precisely the humility of recognizing ourselves as sinners that is the “place” where grace overflows and the light of the Gospel shines forth as a path open to everyone.