ROME — Jesus Christ does not want his disciples to be lazy “couch potatoes” but vigorous agents of change, Pope Francis told young people in Hungary Saturday.
In his meeting with youth in a Budapest sports arena, the pontiff laid out his vision of the kind of followers Jesus wants, urging his hearers to aim high and dream big.
Jesus “does not want his disciples to be like schoolchildren who merely repeat lessons learned, but young people who are free and press ahead,” the pope told them, because God “is attentive to their dreams.”
Making mistakes is okay, the pope insisted, but the important thing is to keep moving forward.
“Jesus wants us to accomplish great things,” Francis said. “He doesn’t want us to be lazy couch potatoes; he doesn’t want us to be quiet and timid; instead, he wants us to be alive, active, ready to take charge and make history.”
Moreover, Christ “never disparages our expectations but, on the contrary, raises the bar of our desires,” he added, because the prize goes to the bold.
Referring to a passage from the gospel where two of Christ’s apostles, James and John, ask Him to allow them to sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom, the pope noted that Jesus “does not rebuke them for their audacity.”
Jesus “does not shatter their ambitions,” Francis asserted, “but corrects them about the right way to achieve them.”
“He accepts their desire for greatness, which is good,” he continued, but he insists “it is not by stepping upon others that we become great, but by stooping to help them.”
Success in life is achieved just as it is in athletics, Francis contended: “First, aim high, then train.”
Do not think that your dreams are unattainable, he urged, but rather, aim high and “invest in the great goals of life!”
Training to achieve them means dialogue with Jesus, “who is the best of coaches,” the pope said, since “Jesus believes in you and is able to bring out the best in you.”
Throughout the Gospel, we learn that “the Lord does not do great things with exceptional people, but with ordinary and weak people like ourselves,” he declared.
“The little things we have, even our sins, are enough for Jesus,” he said. “And what should we do? Place them in the hands of Jesus: that is enough.”