Pope Leo XIV advised that allowing God's action in personal lives requires people to "empty" themselves and foster a deep inner life. The Pope shared these thoughts during an audience on December 29, 2025, with pilgrims from St. Thomas of Villanova Parish in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. The meeting occurred during the Jubilee Year of Hope, which the Pope noted as a very significant period for the Church. Pope Leo XIV expressed gratitude to the pilgrims for their spiritual support, prayers, and generosity toward the successor of Peter.
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Pope Leo XIV met with pilgrims from St. Thomas of Villanova Parish in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, on December 29, 2025, at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.1 2 3
The audience occurred during the Jubilee Year of Hope, described as a significant time for the Church.1 2 3
He thanked the group for their prayers and generosity, calling it a gesture of communion.1 2 3
The Pope highlighted St. Thomas of Villanova, the parish's patron and an Augustinian bishop known for openness to God’s action.1 2 3
This openness enabled the saint to do much good, serving as a model for the faithful.1 2 3
Leo XIV urged pilgrims to emulate the saint’s traits amid a world offering quick and easy solutions.1 2 3
To allow God to work in one’s life, the Pope stressed the need to “empty” oneself and cultivate profound interiority.1 2 3
He described the saint’s unceasing prayer as a “holy restlessness” to remain in God’s presence.1 2 3
Leo XIV praised St. Thomas’s sobriety, simplicity, selfless labor in universities, and apostolic zeal.1 2 3
Believers must recognize talents and dedicate them to the community for the benefit of all.1 2 3
The Pope emphasized the saint’s charity, earning him titles like “Archbishop of the Poor.”1 2 3
He commended the parish’s care for the needy, noting the poor as the “sacramental presence of the Lord.”1 2 3
Explore the theology of self‑emptying in Catholic spirituality
Self-emptying, or kenosis, lies at the heart of Catholic spirituality as a profound imitation of Christ's own self-emptying in the Incarnation and Passion, calling the soul to detach from disordered attachments and surrender fully to God's will. Rooted in Scripture—particularly Philippians 2:6-11, where Christ "emptied himself" (ekenosen) by taking the form of a servant—this theology invites believers to embrace spiritual poverty, indifference to created things, and total self-offering, as exemplified in St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. Through practices of detachment and contemplation, the soul mirrors the humility of God Himself, finding true freedom and union with the Divine.
Catholic spirituality understands self-emptying not as annihilation but as a transformative surrender modeled on Christ. In the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on kenosis, the term derives directly from Philippians 2:6-8, describing how the divine Word, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." This is no diminishment of divinity but a free act of love, where Christ voluntarily limits His divine attributes in His human nature for our salvation. Early Catholic theology rejected Protestant extremes—like Brenz's view of Christ abstaining from divine power or Chemnitz's denial of its use—affirming instead the unity of Christ's divine and human natures.
This kenotic pattern extends to the spiritual life, where believers are called to "empty" themselves of self-will to receive God's grace. Modern Catholic theologians, drawing on Hans Urs von Balthasar, see Christ's self-emptying as revealing the "humility of God": the Son's obedience mirrors the Father's eternal generation, a total gift of self that is both poverty and wealth. As Augustine urges, "Do you want to grasp the majesty of God? First grasp the humility of God," for in Christ's lowliness, divine love is unveiled.
St. Ignatius of Loyola provides the quintessential framework for kenotic spirituality in the Principle and Foundation of his Spiritual Exercises. Here, man is created "to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul," using created things only insofar as they aid this end and ridding himself of them when they hinder it. True freedom demands indifferencia—indifference to health or sickness, riches or poverty, honor or dishonor—desiring only "what is most conducive... to the end for which we are created." This is self-emptying in practice: stripping away attachments to align one's will with God's.
Ignatius deepens this in the meditation on the Two Standards, contrasting Christ's banner of poverty, insults, and humility against the devil's riches, honors, and pride. Christ calls followers to "the highest spiritual poverty," and if God wills, "actual poverty," followed by "contumely or contempt" against worldly honor, leading to humility against pride. Through colloquies with Mary, the Son, and the Father, the exercitant begs reception under Christ's standard, imitating His kenosis without sin or divine displeasure.
To embrace this poverty, Ignatius proposes the meditation on Three Pairs of Men, illustrating degrees of detachment from worldly goods. The first pair seeks riches or temporal interests; the second desires an office or benefice for self-gain; the third yearns to rid itself of attachment entirely, indifferent to keeping or relinquishing the thing "according as God our Lord will put in their will... for the service and praise of His Divine Majesty." This third path crushes disordered tendencies—like repugnance to poverty—by begging God for actual poverty if it serves Him, fostering pure service. Such self-emptying echoes the Annotations, urging retreat from "friends and acquaintances and from all earthly care" to concentrate on God, meriting grace through isolation.
Ignatius's Additions offer concrete methods for kenotic prayer: before contemplation, stand in reverence, imagining God gazing upon you; enter bodily postures—kneeling, prostrate, seated—seeking what aids the soul's desire. Remain in the fruitful point until satisfied, embodying receptive emptiness.
The pinnacle is the Fourth Week's Contemplation to Gain Love, where one recalls God's benefits—Creation, Redemption, particular gifts—and offers total self-surrender:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my intellect, and all my will—all that I have and possess. Thou gavest it to me: to Thee, Lord, I return it! All is Thine, dispose of it according to all Thy will. Give me Thy love and grace, for this is enough for me.
This Suscipe prayer is the fruit of kenosis: gratitude ignites love, emptying the soul to be filled by God.
Deeper theological insight reveals self-emptying as participatory in divine life. Balthasar's theo-dramatic vision portrays God's humility as eternal: the Father begets the Son in "self-emptying," a "giving-away" that empties His "womb" yet unites poverty and wealth. The Son's "Sonhood is already kenosis," grounding His Incarnational obedience. Humans imitate this through Mary, whose "empty and dispossessed womb" images the Father's kenotic fruitfulness, receiving God's total self-gift. As Dorothy Day grasped, true poverty calls nothing "mine," not even "rationality and memory and will," opening to divine inheritance.
Feminist critiques valorizing kenosis risk misconstruing it as mere self-loss, but Catholic nuance distinguishes: self-emptying prepares for divinizing communion, fulfilling the person in Christ, not Buddhist void.
The Church condemns distortions, as in Miguel de Molinos's Quietism, where "natural activity is the enemy of grace" and the soul must "annihilate itself" passively—errors Benedict XIV and Innocent XI rejected as impeding God's action. True kenosis is active indifference, not annihilation.
In summary, Catholic spirituality's theology of self-emptying transforms the soul through Ignatian detachment, mirroring Christ's and the Trinity's humble love. By embracing poverty and the Suscipe, believers find liberty in surrender, echoing Ignatius's call to serve God alone amid worldly lures. This path, faithful to tradition, leads to profound union with the humble God who first emptied Himself for us.