Pope to Spanish seminarians: ‘Fill your emptied land with God’

By Lisa Zengarini

Pope Francis has encouraged a group of seminarians, priests and bishops in Spain to take on the challenge of bringing God to its depopulated rural areas by welcoming diversity to build a community Church.

The encouragement came during his meeting with students and staff of the Burgos Seminary on Saturday.

Bringing the Gospel to an Emptied Spain

Noting the diversity of their origins, the Pope began his speech by observing that they are forming as priests in a land full of history and traditions which, however, has become what has been defined as an “emptied Spain.”

As in many other regions of Europe, Spain has experienced significant depopulation of rural areas in recent decades, accompanied by a profound shift towards secularism with a decreasing number of practicing Catholics and a decline in clerical and religious vocations. religious.

Charity towards God and our brothers

Reflecting on this situation, Pope Francis recalled the passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus sends his disciples “to where (He) was going to go” (Lk 10:1). “It is a good criterion of discernment,” he noted, “because we can translate it into our reality with a few simple words: “Jesus wants me to be in this empty earth to fill it with God,” c that is to say, to make him present among my brothers, to build the community, the Church, the people.

This objective, the Pope emphasized, can be achieved by welcoming and enriching each other in our diversity: “Without charity towards God and our brothers, without walking “two by two”, – as the evangelist says – we cannot bring God.

Availability to God's call

Then, he continued, we must show the Lord our absolute availability to his will, by “begging him to send us,” even though we may seem small in the face of the great effort of reaping his harvest.

Surrender to God

Finally, the Pope said, to fill this earth with God, we need “surrender and trust” so that we can make room in our hearts “to welcome him and our brother, freeing ourselves from our false human security”.

Only by having God in us, Pope Francis concluded, can we communicate his peace and bring it to all people and cities, and thus “fill the fields that now seem barren.”