Pope Francis has warned against listening to the daily messages of seers as a way of renewing one’s Christian identity.
Speaking during Mass at the Sancta Martha Guesthouse on June 9, the Pope’s words came only days after he said a ruling on the Medjugorje apparitions will be coming soon.
On June 9, Francis preached on aspects of Christian identity, taking his cue from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
Among various flawed approaches, he named those “who constantly need Christian identity to be renewed”, “forgetting that they were chosen, anointed”, that “they have the seal of the Holy Spirit”.
Francis said such people ask: “’Where are the seers who can tell us exactly what message Our Lady will be sending at 4’o’clock this afternoon?”
“And their lives depend on this,” the Pope said.
“This identity is not Christian. God’s final word is ‘Jesus’ and nothing else.”
Three out of the six children who claimed to experience visions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje in 1981 say they continue to receive visions every afternoon.
This is because not all of the secrets intended for them have been revealed, they say.
On June 6, during a brief press conference on his flight to Rome from Sarajevo in Bosnia, Pope Francis said: “We are at the point of making decisions [about Medjugorje] . . . and then they will be announced.”
He said guidelines will be given to bishops on the approach they should take.
On June 9, a Vatican spokesman said Francis’s homily comments were probably referring to Medjugorje.
But Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, stressed that the Pope’s brief mention was not the Vatican’s final word or an official pronouncement.
In his homily, Francis also cautioned against those who look for God “with these Christian spiritualites that are a little ethereal”, calling them “modern Gnostics”.
These people, he said, “tell you this or that: no, the last word of God is Jesus Christ, there is no other!”
The Pope also cautioned against broadening one’s conscience “so much that everything enters”.
Sources