Daily Message from Pope Francis – We Try to Accumulate and Increase What We Have


SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2021

“We try to accumulate and increase what we have, but Jesus asks us to give, to diminish. We like to add, we like addition; Jesus likes subtraction, taking something away to give it to others. We want to multiply for ourselves; Jesus appreciates it when we share with others, when we share… The true miracle, says Jesus, is not the multiplication that produces vanity and power, but the sharing that increases love and allows God to perform wonders. Let us try to share more: let us try the way Jesus teaches us.” Pope Francis


Minute Meditation – A Spirituality of Subtraction

Letting go is not in anybody’s program for happiness, and yet all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning. You can take that as an absolute. As German mystic-philosopher Meister Eckhart said, the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
by Richard Rohr, OFM