Pope Francis contrasted “today’s pain and tomorrow’s hope” in his homily as he celebrated Mass for the World Day for the Poor on November 14. He said that Christ’s kingdom of love is built “by concrete gestures,” in service to those most in need.

The Pope insisted on “the need to overcome our self-absorption, interior rigidity, which is the temptation nowadays, that of the ‘restorationists’ who want a Church completely orderly, completely rigid: this is not of the Holy Spirit.”