“Do we ever make an examination of conscience to see if we irritate others?”. Pope Francis asked this question during the catechesis of the last Wednesday Audience before the end of the Jubilee, which was attended by about 22,000 people. “It is easy for us to point the finger at the defects and shortcomings of others, but we should rather learn to put ourselves in the shoes of others”, Pope Francis admonished, speaking of a “work of mercy that we all know very well, but which we perhaps do not put into practice as we should: bearing wrongs patiently”. “We are all very good at identifying a person who may irritate us”, the Pope remarked. “It happens when we bump into someone on the street, or when we receive a phone call… We immediately think: ‘how long shall I put up with the complaints, the gossip, the requests or the bragging of this person?’. Sometimes it also happens that the people who irritate us are the ones who are closest to us: among our relatives, there is always someone; or at the workplace; we meet them even in our free time”. “What should we do with these people who irritate us? “, Pope Francis asked, recalling off the cuff that “we, too, often irritate others”. “In the Bible – the Pope answered -, we see that God Himself has to be merciful to put up with the complaints of His people”. In the Book of Exodus, for instance, “the people is really irritating: first, they weep because they are slaves in Egypt, and God liberates them; then, in the desert, they complain because they have no food to eat, and God gives them manna and quails, but in spite of this, they keep on complaining. Moses was a mediator between God and the people, and sometimes he, too, must have irritated the Lord. But God had patience with him, and in this way, He also taught this fundamental dimension of the faith to Moses and the people”.