He pointed to the example of the early Christians described in the Acts of the Apostles.
"A concrete example of sharing and communion of goods comes to us from the testimony of Barnabas: he owns a field and sells it to deliver the proceeds to the Apostles," Francis said.
"The Christian community is born from the overabundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit and grows thanks to the leaven of sharing between brothers and sisters in Christ. There is a dynamism of solidarity that builds the Church as the family of God," he said.
Pope Francis also pointed out that there were negative examples of hypocrisy and selfishness among this same community. He described the story of Ananias and his wife Sapphira described in chapter 5 of the Acts of the Apostles.
Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property to give the proceeds to the apostles, but retained for themselves a portion of the purchase price.
To which St. Peter responded, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart so that you lied to the Holy Spirit and retained part of the price of the land? ... Why did you contrive this deed? You have lied not to human beings, but to God."
Upon hearing these words from Peter, Ananias fell down and died. "This cheating interrupts the chain of free sharing... and the consequences are tragic, are fatal," Pope Francis said.
"We could say that Ananias lied to God because of an isolated conscience," he said. "Hypocrisy is the worst enemy of this Christian community, of this Christian love: that of pretending to love each other, but only looking for one's own interest."
"To fail in the sincerity of sharing … in the sincerity of love, means to cultivate hypocrisy, move away from the truth, to become selfish, to extinguish the fire of communion and turn to the frost of interior death," the pope said.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.