Pope at Angelus: A Church and a society that excludes no one

By Christopher Wells

“God does not discriminate against anyone because He loves everyone,” Pope Francis said at the Angelus on Sunday morning.

The Holy Father based his reflection on the two “intertwined” miracles in the day’s Gospel: the healing of a woman with a haemorrhage when she touched Jesus’ cloak, and Jesus taking the hand of Jairus’ daughter as He raised her from the dead.

Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus from the dead

God’s touch

Pope Francis emphasized the significance of physical touch in the two stories, both of which involved people who were considered ritually unclean. “Even before the physical healing,” the Pope said, Jesus “challenges a religious misconception, according to which God separates the pure on one side and the impure on the other.”

And he invited the faithful to fix this image in their hearts: “God is one Who takes you by the hand and lifts you up, one Who lets Himself be touched by your pain and touches you in order to heal you and give you life again,”

A Church and a society that excludes no one

Despite all the sufferings of this life, the Pope said, and “even in the face of sin, God does not keep us at a distance.” Instead, “He draws near to let Himself be touched and to touch us, and He always raises us from death.”

Pope Francis invited the faithful to “look to the heart of God” precisely because “we need a Church and a society that does not exclude anyone, that does not treat anyone as ‘impure,’ so that everyone, with their own story, is welcomed and loved without labels or prejudices.”