“It’s beautiful what he said,” Francis commented. “Jesus, the King of the universe, never sat on a throne: He was born in a stable, like we see here,” he said, gesturing toward a Nativity scene from Guatemala in the Paul VI Hall. Jesus was “wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; and finally he died on a cross and, wrapped in a sheet, was laid in the tomb.”
Pope Francis said, to mark the 400th anniversary of St. Francis de Sales’ death, he is releasing an apostolic letter on the Bishop of Geneva, Switzerland.
The title of the message, “Everything pertains to love,” was taken from St. Francis de Sales’ “Treatise on the Love of God,” in which the saint wrote: “In Holy Church, everything pertains to love, lives in love, is done for love and comes from love.”
“God,” Pope Francis said, “has found the means to attract us however we are: with love. Not a possessive and selfish love, as unfortunately human love so often is. His love is pure gift, pure grace, it is all and only for us, for our good. And so he draws us in, with this disarmed and disarming love.”
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