June 16, in Roman Catholic tradition this year was “Evangelium Vitae Sunday,” the Gospel of Life Sunday. In Rome Pope Francis delivered a Homily at Sunday’s Mass in which he pointed to God as the God of life and faith in Christ as the way to life.

It is a beautiful idea that the Gospel is oriented towards enabling us to truly live rather than to the burden of keeping rules and regulations, dividing the world into who is in and who is out, or finding ways to badger other people into seeing the world as we see it, or into coming to church, or simply an escape plan from eternal torment.

The Pope began with a warning:

Whenever we want to assert ourselves, when we become wrapped up in our own selfishness and put ourselves in the place of God, we end up spawning death.

There seems to be a default position in most of us that is inclined to place my feelings, my thoughts, my concerns, my needs at the centre of my life. When I place myself at the centre of the universe I create death in the midst of life.

The Pope’s warning goes on,

…all too often, people do not choose life, they do not accept the “Gospel of Life” but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure, and not by love, by concern for the good of others.

…It is the eternal dream of wanting to build the city of man without God, without God’s life and love – a new Tower of Babel. It is the idea that rejecting God, the message of Christ, the Gospel of Life, will somehow lead to freedom, to complete human fulfilment. As a result, the Living God is replaced by fleeting human idols which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death.

Then he offers a stirring challenge,

Dear brothers and sisters, let us look to God as the God of Life, let us look to his law, to the Gospel message, as the way to freedom and life. The Living God sets us free! Let us say “Yes” to love and not selfishness. Let us say “Yes” to life and not death. Let us say “Yes” to freedom and not enslavement to the many idols of our time. In a word, let us say “Yes” to the God who is love, life and freedom, and who never disappoints (cf. 1 Jn 4:8; Jn 11:2; Jn 8:32).

Again, the Pope moves outside the tight confines that has hampered so many Christian expressions. He affirms that saying “Yes” to “love, life and freedom” is saying “Yes” to God. Wherever there is “love, life and freedom”, God is at work. The challenge the Pope offers to the church is to open to the work of God wherever and in whomever it is taking place.

You do not need to express yourself in precisely the words I use in order for me to affirm that you are saying “Yes” to “love, life and freedom.” You do not need to practice your faith in exactly the way I practice my faith in order for me to see that God is at work in your life deepening your experience of “love, life and freedom.”

This is a truly life-giving Gospel. It has the capacity to open us to “love, life and freedom” wherever they are manifest without demanding the every expression of God’s work must look exactly the same.

If the church had spent more time lifting up the presence of “love, life and freedom” wherever they occur, we might be held up to a little less well-deserved ridicule than sadly is the case today.