Pope Francis celebrated Mass this morning in Saint Peter's Basilica with seminarians, novices, and young people discerning a vocation to religious life. He told them:

Let us cultivate the contemplative dimension, even amid the whirlwind of more urgent and pressing duties. And the more the mission calls you to go out to the margins of existence, let your heart be the more closely united to Christ’s heart, full of mercy and love. Herein lies the secret of the fruitfulness of a disciple of the Lord! Jesus sends his followers out with no “purse, no bag, no sandals” (Lk 10:4). The spread of the Gospel is not guaranteed either by the number of persons, or by the prestige of the institution, or by the quantity of available resources. What counts is to be permeated by the love of Christ, to let oneself be led by the Holy Spirit and to graft one’s own life onto the tree of life, which is the Lord’s Cross.

The full homily is here.

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Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a longtime Commonweal contributor.

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