For a better world after the pandemic, Pope Francis says we need to “contemplate and appreciate” each person’s beauty.Pope Francis continued his call to build a better world after the pandemic, saying that in order to really treat each other well, we have to recognize the beauty of every person.
In recent weeks we have reflected together, in the light of the Gospel, on how to heal the world that is suffering from a malaise that the pandemic has highlighted and accentuated. The malaise was already there: the pandemic highlighted it more, it accentuated it.
In order to do this, we need to turn to the one who can heal: “our eyes fixed on Jesus, who saves and heals the world.”
The pope said that Jesus shares his healing with us, giving us the gifts “to love and heal as He knew how to do, to take care of all without distinction on the basis of race, language or nation.”
So that this may truly happen, we need to contemplate and appreciate the beauty of every human being and every creature. We were conceived in the heart of God (see Eph 1: 3-5). “Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”
Furthermore, every creature has something to say to us about God the creator (see Encyclical Laudato si’, 69, 239).
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Acknowledging this truth and giving thanks for the intimate bonds in our universal communion with all people and all creatures activates “generous care, full of tenderness” (ibid., 220). And it also helps us to recognise Christ present in our poor and suffering brothers and sisters, to encounter them and to listen to their cry and the cry of the earth that echoes it (see ibid., 49).
