"With the truth of the Gospel, one cannot negotiate," says Pope Francis. "Faith in Jesus is not a bargaining chip: it is salvation, it is encounter, it is redemption. It cannot be sold off cheaply."
The Pope said this as he took up again the Wednesday morning audiences open to the public, after a break in July.
The Holy Father has just started a series of reflections on St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians.
At today's audience, he noted how Paul -- and "it is Paul’s love, Paul’s interest, Paul’s profession, to proclaim" -- is so disheartened when the Galatians are threatened by "another gospel."
"The pivot around which everything revolves is the Gospel," Pope Francis said, noting that Paul does not think of the "four Gospels," as is natural for us, since when he is sending this letter to the Galatians, none of the four Gospels had yet been written.
And this proclamation is "a Gospel that is expressed in four verbs," the Pope said: Christ died, he was buried, raised on the third day, and appeared to Cephas, then the Twelve.
"The Apostle, cannot risk compromises on such decisive ground. The Gospel is only one and that is what he proclaimed; there can be no other," the Pope said.
This Gospel that Paul has proclaimed is not the true Gospel because it was "he who announced it, no! He does not say this. This would be presumptuous, it would be boastful. Rather, he affirms that 'his' Gospel -- the same one that the other Apostles were proclaiming elsewhere -- is the only authentic one, because it is that of Jesus Christ."
Thus the new “gospel” being taken up by the Galatians threatens the foundations of the community and "on this point the Apostle leaves no room for negotiation: one cannot negotiate. With the truth of the Gospel, one cannot negotiate. Either you receive the Gospel as it is, as it was announced, or you receive any other thing. But you cannot negotiate with the Gospel. One cannot compromise."
Pope Francis said that it's possible to fall into the same trap as the Galatians through a lack of discernment.
But Paul, said the Pope, is "moved by total enthusiasm for the novelty of the Gospel, which is a radical novelty, not a fleeting novelty: there are no 'fashionable' gospels, the Gospel is always new, it is newness."
So, the Pope said, it's necessary to sort through things. "[I]n this labyrinth of good intentions it is necessary to disentangle oneself in order to grasp the supreme truth that is most consistent with the Person and preaching of Jesus and His revelation of the Father's love."
In other words, we must know how to discern.
