News February 2023

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

The Gospel of this first Sunday of Lent presents to us Jesus in the desert, tempted by the devil (cf. Mt 4:1-11). “Devil” means “divider”. The devil always wants to create division, and it is what he sets out to do by tempting Jesus. Let us see, then, from whom he wants to divide him, and how he tempts him.

From whom does the devil want to divide Jesus? After receiving Baptism from John in the Jordan, Jesus was called by the Father “my beloved Son” (Mt 3:17), and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove (cf. v. 16). The Gospel thus presents us the three divine Persons joined in love. Then Jesus himself will say that he came into the world to make us, too, partake in the unity between him and the Father (cf. Jn 17:11). The devil, instead, does the opposite: he enters the scene to divide Jesus from the Father and to distract him from his mission of unity for us. He always divides.

Let us now see how he tries to do it. The devil wants to take advantage of the human condition of Jesus, who is weak as he has fasted for forty days and is hungry (cf. Mt 4:2). The evil one then tries to instil in him three powerful “poisons”, to paralyse his mission of unity. These poisons are attachment, mistrust, and power. First and foremost, the poison of attachment to material goods, to needs; with persuasive arguments the devil tries to convince Jesus: “You are hungry, why must you fast? Listen to your need and satisfy it, you have the right and the power: transform the stones into bread”. Then the second poison, mistrust: “Are you sure the Father wants what is good for you? Test him, blackmail him! Throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple and make him do what you want”. Finally, power: “You have no need for your Father! Why wait for his gifts? Follow the criteria of the world, take everything for yourself, and you will be powerful!”. The three temptations of Jesus. And we too live among these temptations, always. It is terrible, but that is just how it is, for us too: attachment to material things, mistrust and the thirst for power are three widespread and dangerous temptations, which the devil uses to divide us from the Father and to make us no longer feel like brothers and sisters among ourselves, to lead us to solitude and desperation. He wanted to do this to Jesus, he wants to do it to us: to lead us to desperation.

But Jesus defeats the temptations. And how does he defeat them? By avoiding discussion with the devil and answering with the Word of God. This is important: you cannot argue with the devil, you cannot converse with the devil! Jesus confronts him with the Word of God. He quotes three phrases from the Scripture that speak of freedom from goods (cf. Dt 8:3), trust (cf. Dt 6:16), and service to God (cf. Dt 6:13), three phrases that are opposed to temptation. He never enters into dialogue with the devil, he does not negotiate with him, but he repels his insinuations with the beneficent Words of the Scripture. It is an invitation to us too; one cannot defeat him by negotiating with him, he is stronger than us. We defeat the devil by countering him in faith with the divine Word. In this way, Jesus teaches us to defend unity with God and among ourselves from the attacks of the divider. The divine Word that is Jesus’ answer to the temptation of the devil.

And we ask ourselves: what place does the Word of God have in my life? Do I turn to it in my spiritual struggles? If I have a vice or a recurrent temptation, why do I not obtain help by seeking out a verse of the Word of God that responds to that vice? Then, when temptation comes, I recite it, I pray it, trusting in the grace of Christ. Let us try, it will help us in temptation, it will help us a great deal, so that, amid the voices that stir within us, the beneficent one of the Word of God will resound. May Mary, who welcomed the Word of God and with her humility defeated the pride of the divider, accompany us in the spiritual struggle of Lent.

26.02.23

“Behold, now is the favourable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor 6:2). With these words, the Apostle Paul helps us enter into the spirit of the Lenten season. Lent is indeed the “favourable time” to return to what is essential, to divest ourselves of all that weighs us down, to be reconciled with God, and to rekindle the fire of the Holy Spirit hidden beneath the ashes of our frail humanity. Return to what is essential. It is the season of grace when we put into practice what the Lord asks of us at the beginning of today’s first reading: “Return to me with all your heart” (Jl 2:12). Return to what is essential: it is the Lord.

The rite of the imposition of ashes serves as the beginning of this return journey.  It exhorts us to do two things: to return to the truth about ourselves and to return to God and to our brothers and sisters.

First, to return to the truth about ourselves. The ashes remind us who we are and whence we come. They bring us back to the essential truth of our lives: the Lord alone is God and we are the work of his hands. That is the truth of who we are. We have life, whereas God is life. He is the Creator, while we are the fragile clay fashioned by his hands. We come from the earth and we need heaven; we need him. With God, we will rise from our ashes, but without him, we are dust. As we humbly bow our heads to receive the ashes, we are reminded of this truth: we are the Lord’s; we belong to him. For God “formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7); we exist because he breathed into us the breath of life. As a tender and merciful Father, God too experiences Lent, since he is concerned for us; he waits for us; he awaits our return.  And he constantly urges us not to despair, even when we lie fallen in the dust of our weakness and sin, for “he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps 103:14). Let us listen to those words again: He remembers that we are dust. God knows this; yet we often forget it, and think that we are self-sufficient, strong and invincible without him. We put on make up and think we are better than we really are. We are dust.

Lent, then, is the time to remind ourselves who is the Creator and who is the creature. The time to proclaim that God alone is Lord, to drop the pretense of being self-sufficient and the need to put ourselves at the centre of things, to be the top of the class, to think that by our own abilities we can succeed in life and transform the world around us. Now is the favourable time to be converted, to stop looking at ourselves and to start looking into ourselves. How many distractions and trifles distract us from the things that really count!  How often do we get caught up in our own wants and needs, lose sight of the heart of the matter, and fail to embrace the true meaning of our lives in this world! Lent is a time of truth, a time to drop the masks we put on each day to appear perfect in the eyes of the world. It is a time, as Jesus said in the Gospel, to reject lies and hypocrisy: not those of others, but of ourselves: We look them in the eye and resist them.

Yet there is a second step: the ashes invite us also to return to God and to our brothers and sisters. Once we return to the truth about ourselves and remind ourselves that we are not self-sufficient, we realize that we exist only through relationships: our primordial relationship with the Lord and our vital relationships with others. The ashes we receive this evening tell us that every presumption of self-sufficiency is false and that self-idolatry is destructive, imprisoning us in isolation and loneliness: we look in the mirror and believe that we are perfect, the centre of the world. Life is instead a relationship: we receive it from God and from our parents, and we can always revive and renew it thanks to the Lord and to those he puts at our side. Lent, then, is a season of grace when we can rebuild our relationship with God and with others, opening our hearts in the silence of prayer and emerging from the fortress of our self-sufficiency. Lent is the favourable time when we can break the chains of our individualism and isolation, and rediscover, through encounter and listening, our companions along the journey of each day. And to learn once more to love them as brothers and sisters.

How can we do this? To make this journey, to return to the truth about ourselves and to return to God and to others, we are urged to take three great paths: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. These are the traditional ways, and there is no need for novelty. Jesus said it clearly: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. It is not about mere external rites, these must be actions expressing the renewal of our hearts.  Almsgiving is not a hasty gesture performed to ease our conscience, to compensate for our interior imbalance; rather, it is a way of touching the sufferings of the poor with our own hands and heart. Prayer is not a ritual, but a truthful and loving dialogue with the Father.  Fasting is not a quaint devotion, but a powerful gesture to remind ourselves what truly matters and what is merely ephemeral. Jesus gives “advice that still retains its salutary value for us: external gestures must always be matched by a sincere heart and consistent behaviour.  Indeed, what use is it to tear our garments if our hearts remain distant from the Lord, that is, from goodness and justice?” (BENEDICT XVI, Homily for Ash Wednesday, 1 March 2006). All too often, our gestures and rites have no impact on our lives; they remain superficial. Perhaps we perform them only to gain the admiration or esteem of others. Let us remember this: in our personal life, as in the life of the Church, outward displays, human judgments and the world’s approval count for nothing; the only thing that truly matters is the truth and love that God himself sees.

If we stand humbly before his gaze, then almsgiving, prayer and fasting will not simply remain outward displays, but will express what we truly are: children of God, brothers and sisters of one another. Almsgiving, charity, will be a sign of our compassion toward those in need, and help us to return to others. Prayer will give voice to our profound desire to encounter the Father, and will bring us back to him. Fasting will be the spiritual training ground where we joyfully renounce the superfluous things that weigh us down, grow in interior freedom and return to the truth about ourselves. Encounter with the Father, interior freedom, compassion.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us bow our heads, receive the ashes, and lighten our hearts. Let us set out on the path of charity. We have been given forty days, a “favourable time” to remind ourselves that the world is bigger than our narrow personal needs, and to rediscover the joy, not of accumulating material goods, but of caring for those who are poor and afflicted. Let us set out, then, on the path of prayer and use these forty days to restore God’s primacy in our lives and to dialogue with him from the heart, and not only in spare moments. Let us set out on the path of fasting and use these forty days to take stock of ourselves, to free ourselves from the dictatorship of full schedules, crowded agendas and superficial needs, and choose the things that truly matter.

Brothers and sisters, let us not neglect the grace of this holy season, but fix our gaze on the cross and set out, responding generously to the powerful promptings of Lent. At the end of the journey, we will encounter with greater joy the Lord of life, we will meet him, who alone can raise us up from our ashes.

22.02.23 m

Lenten Penance and the Synodal Journey

 Dear brothers and sisters!

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all recount the episode of the Transfiguration of Jesus. There we see the Lord’s response to the failure of his disciples to understand him. Shortly before, there had been a real clash between the Master and Simon Peter, who, after professing his faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, rejected his prediction of the passion and the cross. Jesus had firmly rebuked him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a scandal to me, because you do not think according to God, but according to men!” (Mt 16:23). Following this, “six days later, Jesus took with him Peter, James and John his brother and led them away to a high mountain” (Mt 17:1).

The Gospel of the Transfiguration is proclaimed every year on the Second Sunday of Lent. During this liturgical season, the Lord takes us with him to a place apart. While our ordinary commitments compel us to remain in our usual places and our often repetitive and sometimes boring routines, during Lent we are invited to ascend “a high mountain” in the company of Jesus and to live a particular experience of spiritual discipline – ascesis – as God’s holy people.

Lenten penance is a commitment, sustained by grace, to overcoming our lack of faith and our resistance to following Jesus on the way of the cross. This is precisely what Peter and the other disciples needed to do. To deepen our knowledge of the Master, to fully understand and embrace the mystery of his salvation, accomplished in total self-giving inspired by love, we must allow ourselves to be taken aside by him and to detach ourselves from mediocrity and vanity. We need to set out on the journey, an uphill path that, like a mountain trek, requires effort, sacrifice and concentration. These requisites are also important for the synodal journey to which, as a Church, we are committed to making. We can benefit greatly from reflecting on the relationship between Lenten penance and the synodal experience.

In his “retreat” on Mount Tabor, Jesus takes with him three disciples, chosen to be witnesses of a unique event. He wants that experience of grace to be shared, not solitary, just as our whole life of faith is an experience that is shared. For it is in togetherness that we follow Jesus. Together too, as a pilgrim Church in time, we experience the liturgical year and Lent within it, walking alongside those whom the Lord has placed among us as fellow travellers. Like the ascent of Jesus and the disciples to Mount Tabor, we can say that our Lenten journey is “synodal”, since we make it together along the same path, as disciples of the one Master. For we know that Jesus is himself the Way, and therefore, both in the liturgical journey and in the journey of the Synod, the Church does nothing other than enter ever more deeply and fully into the mystery of Christ the Saviour.

And so we come to its culmination. The Gospel relates that Jesus “was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light” (Mt 17:2).This is the “summit”, the goal of the journey. At the end of their ascent, as they stand on the mountain heights with Jesus, the three disciples are given the grace of seeing him in his glory, resplendent in supernatural light. That light did not come from without, but radiated from the Lord himself. The divine beauty of this vision was incomparably greater than all the efforts the disciples had made in the ascent of Tabor. During any strenuous mountain trek, we must keep our eyes firmly fixed on the path; yet the panorama that opens up at the end amazes us and rewards us by its grandeur. So too, the synodal process may often seem arduous, and at times we may become discouraged. Yet what awaits us at the end is undoubtedly something wondrous and amazing, which will help us to understand better God’s will and our mission in the service of his kingdom.

The disciples’ experience on Mount Tabor was further enriched when, alongside the transfigured Jesus, Moses and Elijah appeared, signifying respectively the Law and the Prophets (cf. Mt 17:3). The newness of Christ is at the same time the fulfilment of the ancient covenant and promises; it is inseparable from God’s history with his people and discloses its deeper meaning. In a similar way, the synodal journey is rooted in the Church’s tradition and at the same time open to newness. Tradition is a source of inspiration for seeking new paths and for avoiding the opposed temptations of immobility and improvised experimentation.

The Lenten journey of penance and the journey of the Synod alike have as their goal a transfiguration, both personal and ecclesial. A transformation that, in both cases, has its model in the Transfiguration of Jesus and is achieved by the grace of his paschal mystery. So that this transfiguration may become a reality in us this year, I would like to propose two “paths” to follow in order to ascend the mountain together with Jesus and, with him, to attain the goal.

The first path has to do with the command that God the Father addresses to the disciples on Mount Tabor as they contemplate Jesus transfigured. The voice from the cloud says: “Listen to him” (Mt 17:5). The first proposal, then, is very clear: we need to listen to Jesus. Lent is a time of grace to the extent that we listen to him as he speaks to us. And how does he speak to us? First, in the word of God, which the Church offers us in the liturgy. May that word not fall on deaf ears; if we cannot always attend Mass, let us study its daily biblical readings, even with the help of the internet. In addition to the Scriptures, the Lord speaks to us through our brothers and sisters, especially in the faces and the stories of those who are in need. Let me say something else, which is quite important for the synodal process: listening to Christ often takes place in listening to our brothers and sisters in the Church. Such mutual listening in some phases is the primary goal, but it remains always indispensable in the method and style of a synodal Church.

On hearing the Father’s voice, the disciples “fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and do not be afraid.’ And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone” (Mt 17:6-8). Here is the second proposal for this Lent: do not take refuge in a religiosity made up of extraordinary events and dramatic experiences, out of fear of facing reality and its daily struggles, its hardships and contradictions. The light that Jesus shows the disciples is an anticipation of Easter glory, and that must be the goal of our own journey, as we follow “him alone”.  Lent leads to Easter: the “retreat” is not an end in itself, but a means of preparing us to experience the Lord’s passion and cross with faith, hope and love, and thus to arrive at the resurrection. Also on the synodal journey, when God gives us the grace of certain powerful experiences of communion, we should not imagine that we have arrived – for there too, the Lord repeats to us: “Rise, and do not be afraid”. Let us go down, then, to the plain, and may the grace we have experienced strengthen us to be “artisans of synodality” in the ordinary life of our communities.

Dear brothers and sisters, may the Holy Spirit inspire and sustain us this Lent in our ascent with Jesus, so that we may experience his divine splendour and thus, confirmed in faith, persevere in our journey together with him, glory of his people and light of the nations.

Feb 2023

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

In our catechetical itinerary on the passion for evangelizing, today we start from the words of Jesus that we have heard: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Mt 28:19). ‘Go,’ says the Risen One, ‘not to indoctrinate, not to make proselytes, no, but to make disciples, that is, to give everyone the opportunity to come into contact with Jesus, to know and love Him freely. Go and baptise: to baptise means to immerse; and therefore, before indicating a liturgical action, it expresses a vital action: to immerse one’s life in the Father, in the Son, in the Holy Spirit; to experience every day the joy of the presence of God who is close to us as Father, as Brother, as Spirit acting in us, in our very spirit.” To be baptised is to immerse oneself in the Trinity

When Jesus says to His disciples – and also to us – ‘Go!’, He is not just communicating a word. No. He communicates the Holy Spirit at the same time, because it is only thanks to Him, thanks to the Spirit, that one can receive Christ's mission and carry it out (cf. Jn 20:21-22). The Apostles, in fact, out of fear, remain closed up in the Upper Room until the day of Pentecost arrives and the Holy Spirit descends upon them (cf. Acts 2:1-13). And in that moment the fear is gone, and with His power those fishermen, mostly unlettered, will change the world. ‘But if they can’t speak…?’ But it is the word of the Spirit, the strength of the Spirit that bears them onward to change the world. The proclamation of the Gospel, therefore, is only realized in the power of the Spirit, who precedes the missionaries and prepares hearts: He is ‘the engine of evangelisation.’

We discover this in the Acts of the Apostles, where on every page we see that the protagonist of the proclamation is not Peter, Paul, Stephen, or Philip, but is the Holy Spirit. Staying with the book of Acts, a pivotal moment in the beginning of the Church is recounted, which can also say a lot to us. Then, as now, tribulations were not lacking, beautiful moments and not so beautiful moments, joys were accompanied by worries, both of these. One worry in particular: how to deal with the pagans who came to the faith, with those who did not belong to the Jewish people, for example. Were they or were they not bound to observe the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law? This was no small matter for those people. Two groups were thus formed, between those who considered the observance of the Law indispensable and those who did not. In order to discern, the Apostles gathered in what was called the ‘Council of Jerusalem,’ the first in history. How to resolve the dilemma? They might have sought a good compromise between tradition and innovation: some rules are observed, and others are left aside. Yet the Apostles do not follow this human wisdom to seek a diplomatic balance between the one and the other, they don’t follow this, but adapting to the work of the Spirit, who had anticipated them by descending upon the pagans as He had upon them.

And so, removing almost every obligation related to the Law, they communicate the final decisions, made – and this is what they write – ‘by the Holy Spirit and by us’ (cf. Acts 15:28), and this went out, ‘the Holy Spirit with us,’ and the Apostles always acted in this way. Together, without being divided, despite having different sensitivities and opinions, they listen to the Spirit. And He teaches one thing, which is also valid today: every religious tradition is useful if it facilitates the encounter with Jesus. We could say that the historic decision of the first Council, from which we also benefit, was motivated by a principle, the principle of proclamation: everything in the Church must be conformed to the requirements of the proclamation of the Gospel; not to the opinions of the conservatives or the progressives, but to the fact that Jesus reaches people’s lives. Therefore, every choice, every usage, every structure, and every tradition is to be evaluated on the basis of whether they favour the proclamation of Christ. And when decisions are found in the Church – for example ideological divisions: ‘I am conservative because...’ ‘I am progressive because...’ But where is the Holy Spirit? Be careful that the Gospel is not an idea, the Gospel is not an ideology: the Gospel is a proclamation that touches your heart and makes you change your heart, but if you take refuge in an idea, in an ideology, whether right or left or centre, you are making the Gospel a political party, an ideology, a club of people. The Gospel always gives you this freedom of the Spirit that acts within you and carries you forward. And how much it requires of us today to take hold of the freedom of the Gospel and allow ourselves to be carried forward by the Spirit.

In this way the Spirit sheds light on the path of the Church, always. In fact, He is  not only the light of hearts; He is the light that orients the Church: He brings clarity, helps to distinguish, helps to discern. This is why it is necessary to invoke Him often; let us also do so today, at the beginning of Lent. Because, as Church, we can have well-defined times and spaces, well-organised communities, institutes and movements, but without the Spirit, everything remains soulless. The organization… it won’t do, it’s not enough: it is the Spirit that gives life to the Church. The Church, if it does not pray to Him and invoke Him, closes in on itself, in sterile and exhausting debates, in wearisome polarisations, while the flame of the mission is extinguished. It is very sad to see the Church as if it were nothing more than a parliament. The Church is something else. The Church is the community of men and women who believe and proclaim Jesus Christ, but moved by the Holy Spirit, not by their own reason. Yes, you use your reason, but the Spirit comes to enlighten and move it. The Spirit makes us go forth, urges us to proclaim the faith in order to confirm ourselves in the faith, to go on mission to discover who we are. That is why the Apostle Paul recommends: ‘Do not quench the Spirit’ (1 Thess 5:19). Do not quench the Spirit. Let us pray to the Spirit often, let us invoke him, let us ask him every day to kindle his light in us. Let us do this before each encounter, to become apostles of Jesus with the people we find. Don’t quench the Spirit, either in the community or in each one of us.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us start, and start anew, as Church, from the Holy Spirit. ‘It is undoubtedly important that in our pastoral planning we start from sociological surveys, analyses, the list of difficulties, the list of expectations and even complaints, this must be done, in order to touch reality. However, it is far more important to start from the experiences of the Spirit: that is the real departure. It is a fundamental principle that, in the spiritual life, is called the primacy of consolation over desolation. First there is the Spirit who consoles, revives, enlightens, moves; then there will also be desolation, suffering, darkness, but the principle for adjusting in the darkness is the light of the Spirit’ . This is the principle to guide ourselves in things we do not understand, in confusions, even in such great darkness, it is important. Let us ask ourselves, each one of us, let us ask ourselves if we open ourselves up to this light, if we give it space: do I invoke the Spirit? Each of us can answer within ourselves. How many prayers to the Spirit? ‘No, Father, I pray to Our Lady, I pray to the Saints, I pray to Jesus, sometimes I pray the Our Father, I pray to the Father…’ ‘And the Holy Spirit? Don’t you pray to the Holy Spirit, who is the one who moves your heart, who brings you consolation, who brings you the desire to evangelize, undertake mission? Do I let myself be guided by Him, who invites me not to close in on myself but to bear Jesus, to bear witness to the primacy of God’s consolation over the desolation of the world? May our Lady, who has understood this well, help us to understand it.

22.02.23 e

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

The words Jesus addresses to us in this Sunday’s Gospel are demanding, and seem paradoxical: he invites us to turn the other cheek and to love even our enemies (cf. Mt 5:38-48). It is normal for us to love those who love us, and to be friends of those who are friends to us; yet Jesus provokes us by saying: if you act in this way, “what more are you doing than others?” (v. 47). What more are you doing? Here is the point to which I would like to draw your attention today, to what you do that is extraordinary.

“More”, “extraordinary”, is what goes beyond the limits of the usual, what exceeds the habitual practices and normal calculations dictated by prudence. Instead, in general we try to have everything more or less in order and under control, so as to correspond to our expectations, to our measure: fearing not to be reciprocated or to expose ourselves too much and then be disappointed, we prefer to love only those who love us in order to avoid disappointments, to do good only to those who are good to us, to be generous only to those who can return a favour; and to those who treat us badly, we respond in kind, so that we are even. But the Lord warns us: this is not enough! We would say: this is not Christian! If we remain in the ordinary, in the balance between giving and receiving, things do not change. If God were to follow this logic, we would have no hope of salvation! But, fortunately for us, God’s love is always “extraordinary”, it goes beyond the usual criteria by which we humans live out our relationships.

Jesus’ words challenge us, then. While we try to remain within the ordinary of utilitarian reasoning, he asks us to open ourselves up to the extraordinary, to the extraordinary of a freely-given love; while we always try to balance the books, Christ encourages us to live the unbalance of love. Jesus is not a good book-keeper, no! He always leads us to the imbalance of love. We should not be surprised at this. If God had not “unbalanced” himself, we would never have been saved: it was the imbalance of the cross that saved us! Jesus would not have come to seek us out when we were lost and distant; he would not have loved us up to the end, he would not have embraced the cross for us, who did not deserve all this and could not give him anything in return. As the Apostle Paul writes, “One will hardly die for a righteous – though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rm 5:7-8). So, God loves us while we are sinners, not because we are good or able to give something back to him. Brothers and sisters, God's love is a love always in excess, always beyond calculation, always disproportionate. And today he also asks us to live in this way, because only in this way will we truly bear witness to him.

Brothers and sisters, the Lord invites us to step out of the logic of self-interest and not to measure love on the scales of calculations and convenience. He invites us not to respond to evil with evil, to dare to do good, to risk in the gift, even if we receive little or nothing in return. For it is this love that slowly transforms conflicts, shortens distances, overcomes enmities and heals the wounds of hatred. And so, we can ask ourselves, each one of us: do I, in my life, follow the logic of recompense, or that of gratuitousness, as God does? The extraordinary love of Christ is not easy, but it is possible; it is possible because He Himself helps us by giving us His Spirit, His love without measure.

Let us pray to Our Lady, who by answering “yes” to God without calculation, allowed him to make her the masterpiece of his Grace.

19.02.23 e

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

We continue our catechesis; the theme we have chosen is “The passion of evangelizing, apostolic zeal.” Because evangelizing is not saying, ‘Look, blah, blah, blah’ and nothing more. There is a passion that involves everything: the mind, the heart, the hands, going out… everything, the whole person is involved with this proclamation of the Gospel, and for this reason we talk about the passion for evangelizing. After having seen in Jesus the model and the master of proclamation, we turn today to the first disciples, to what the disciples did. The Gospel says that Jesus “appointed twelve, to be with Him, and to be sent out to preach” (Mk 3:14), two things: to be with him and to send them to preach. There is one aspect that seems contradictory: He called them to be with Him and to go and preach. One would say: either one or the other, either stay or go. But no: for Jesus there is no going without staying and there is no staying without going. It is not easy to understand this, but that’s the way it is. Let us try to understand a little bit what is the sense in which Jesus says these things.

First of all, there is no going without staying: before sending the disciples on mission, Christ—the Gospel says—“calls them to Himself” (cf. Mt 10:1). The proclamation is born from the encounter with the Lord; every Christian activity, especially the mission, begins from there. Not from what is learnt in an academy. No, no! It begins from the encounter with the Lord. Witnessing Him, in fact, means radiating Him; but, if we do not receive His light, we will be extinguished; if we do not spend time with Him, we will bear ourselves instead of Him—I am bringing myself and not Him—and it will all be in vain. So only the person who remains with Him can bring the Gospel of Jesus. Someone who does not remain with Him cannot bear the Gospel. He will bring ideas, but not the Gospel. Equally, however, there is no staying without going. In fact, following Christ is not an inward looking fact: without proclamation, without service, without mission, the relationship with Jesus does not grow. We note that in the Gospel the Lord sends the disciples before having completed their preparation: shortly after having called them, He is already sending them! This means that the mission experience is part of Christian formation. Let us then recall these two constitutive moments for every disciple: staying with Jesus and going forth, sent by Jesus.

Having called the disciples to Himself and before sending them, Christ addresses a discourse to them, known as the ‘missionary discourse’—this is what it is called in the Gospel. It is found in chapter 10 of Matthew’s Gospel and is like the ‘constitution’ of the proclamation. From that discourse, which I recommend you read today—it is only one page in the Gospel—I draw out three aspects: why proclaim, what to proclaim and how to proclaim.

Why to proclaim: The motivation lies in a few words of Jesus, which it is good for us to remember: “Freely you have received, freely give” (v. 8). They are just a few words. But why proclaim? Because I have received freely, and I should give freely. The proclamation does not begin from us, but from the beauty of what we have received for free, without merit: meeting Jesus, knowing Him, discovering that we are loved and saved. It is such a great gift that we cannot keep it to ourselves, we feel the need to spread it; but in the same style, right? That is, in gratuitousness. In other words: we have a gift, so we are called to make a gift of ourselves; we have received a gift and our vocation is to make a gift of ourselves to others; there is in us the joy of being children of God, it must be shared with our brothers and sisters who do not yet know it! This is the reason for the proclamation. Going forth and bringing the joy of what we have received.

Second: What, then, to proclaim? Jesus says: “Preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” (v. 7). This is what must be said, first and foremost: God is near. So, never forget this: God has always been close to the people. He said it to the people Himself: He said, “Look, what God is as close to the nations as I am to you?” This closeness is one of the most important things about God. There are three important things: closeness, mercy, and tenderness. Don’t forget that. Who is God? The One Who is Close, the One Who is Tender, the One Who is Merciful. This is the reality of God. We, in preaching, often urge people to do something, and that is fine; but let’s not forget that the main message is that He is near: closeness, mercy, and tenderness. Accepting God’s love is more difficult because we always want to be in the centre, we want to be protagonists, we are more inclined to do than to let ourselves be moulded, to speak than to listen. But, if what we do comes first, we will still be the protagonists. Instead, the proclamation must give primacy to God: to give the primacy to God, the first place to God, and to give to others the opportunity to welcome Him, to realise that He is near. And me in the background.

The third point: how to proclaim. This is the aspect Jesus dwells on most: how to proclaim, what is the method, what should be the language for proclaiming; it’s significant: He tells us that the manner, the style is essential in witnessing. Witnessing does not just involve the mind and saying something, the concepts. No. It involves everything, mind, heart, hands, everything, the three languages of the person: the language of thought, the language of affection, and the language of work. The three languages. One cannot evangelise only with the mind or only with the heart or only with the hands. Everything is involved. And, in style, the important thing is testimony, as Jesus wants us to do. He says this: “I send you out as sheep among wolves” (v. 16). He does not ask us to be able to face the wolves, that is, to be able to argue, to offer counter arguments, and to defend ourselves. No, no. We might think like this: let us become relevant, numerous, prestigious, and the world will listen to us and respect us and we will defeat the wolves. No, it’s not like that. No, I send you out as sheep, as lambs. This is important. If you don’t want to be sheep, the Lord will not defend you from the wolves. Deal with it as best you can. But if you are sheep, rest assured that the Lord will defend you from the wolves. Be humble. He asks us to be like this, to be meek and with the will to be innocent, to be disposed to sacrifice; this is what the lamb represents: meekness, innocence, dedication, tenderness. And He, the Shepherd, will recognise His lambs and protect them from the wolves. On the other hand, lambs disguised as wolves are unmasked and torn to pieces. A Church Father wrote: ‘As long as we are lambs, we will conquer, and even if we are surrounded by many wolves, we will overcome them. But if we become wolves—‘Ah, how clever, look, I feel good about myself’—we will be defeated, because we will be deprived of the shepherd’s help. He does not shepherd wolves, but lambs’ (St John Chrysostom, Homily 33 on the Gospel of Matthew). If I want to be the Lord’s, I have to allow Him to be my shepherd; and He is not the shepherd of wolves, He is the shepherd of lambs, meek, humble, kind as the Lord is.

Still on the subject of how to proclaim, it is striking that Jesus, instead of prescribing what to bring on a mission, says what not to bring. At times, one sees some apostles, some person who relocates, some Christian that says he is an apostle and has given his life to the Lord, and he is carrying a lot of luggage. But this is not of the Lord. The Lord makes you lighten your load. “Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff” (vv. 9—10). Don’t take anything. He says not to lean on material certainties, but to go into the world without worldliness. That is to say, I am going into the world, not with the style of the world, not with the world’s values, not with wordliness—for the Church, falling into worldliness is the worst thing that can happen. I go forth with simplicity. This is how one should proclaim: by showing Jesus rather than talking about Jesus. And how do we show Jesus? With our witness. And finally, by going together, in community: the Lord sends all the disciples, but no one goes alone. The apostolic Church is completely missionary and in the mission it finds its unity. So: going forth, meek and good as lambs, without worldliness, and going together. Here is the key to the proclamation, this is the key to success in evangelization. Let us accept these invitations from Jesus: may His words be our point of reference.

15.02.23 e

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

In the Gospel of today’s liturgy, Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfil” (Mt 5:17). To fulfil: this is a key word to understand Jesus and his message. But what does this fulfilment mean? To explain, the Lord begins by saying what is not fulfilment. The Scripture says “Do not kill”, but for Jesus this is not enough if brothers are then hurt by words; the Scripture says “Do not commit adultery”, but this is not enough if one then lives a love tainted by duplicity and falsehood; the Scripture says “Do not bear false witness”, but it is not enough to take a solemn oath if one then acts with hypocrisy (cf. Mt 5:21-37). This is not fulfilment.

To give a concrete example, Jesus concentrates on the “rite of the offertory”. Making an offering to God reciprocates the gratuity of his gifts. It was a very important rite – making an offering to reciprocate symbolically, let’s say, the gratuitousness of his gifts – so important that to interrupt it was forbidden other than for serious reasons. But Jesus states that it must be interrupted if a brother has something against us, in order to go and be reconciled with him first (cf. vv.23-24): only in this way is the rite fulfilled. The message is clear: God loves us first, freely, taking the first step towards us, without us deserving it; and so we cannot celebrate his love without in our turn taking the first step towards reconciliation with those who have hurt us. In this way there is fulfilment in God’s eyes, otherwise external, purely ritualistic observance is pointless, it becomes a pretence. In other words, Jesus makes us understand that religious rules are necessary, they are good, but they are only the beginning: to fulfil them, it is necessary to go beyond the letter and live their meaning. The commandments that God has given us must not be locked up in the airless vaults of formal observance; otherwise, we are limited to an exterior, detached religiosity, servants of “God the Master” rather than children of “God the Father”. Jesus wants this: not to have the idea of serving a God the Master, but the Father; and this is why it is necessary to go beyond the letter.

Brothers and sisters, this problem was present not only in Jesus’ time; it is there today too. At times, for example, we hear it said, “Father, I have not killed, I have not stolen, I have not harmed anyone…”, as if to say, “I am fine”. This is formal observance, which is satisfied with the bare minimum, whereas Jesus invites us to aspire to the maximum possible. That is: God does not reason with calculations and tables; he loves us as one who is enamoured: not to the minimum, but to the maximum! He does not say, “I love you up to a certain point”. No, true love is never up to a certain point, and is never satisfied; love always goes beyond, one cannot do without. The Lord showed us this by giving his life on the cross and forgiving his murderers (cf. Lk 23:34). And he entrusted to us the commandment most dear to him: that we love each other like he loved us (cf. Jn 15:12). This is the love that gives fulfilment to the Law, to faith, to true life!

So, brothers and sisters, we might ask ourselves: how do I live faith? Is it a matter of calculations, formalism, or a love story with God? Am I content merely with not doing harm, of keeping the “façade” in good order, or do I try to grow in love for God and others? And every now and then, do I check myself on Jesus’ great commandment, do I ask myself if I love my neighbour as He loves me? Because perhaps we are inflexible in judging others and forget to be merciful, as God is with us.

May Mary, who observed the Word of God perfectly, help us to give fulfilment to our faith and our charity.

12.02.23 e

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

Illness is part of our human condition. Yet, if illness is experienced in isolation and abandonment, unaccompanied by care and compassion, it can become inhumane.

When we go on a journey with others, it is not unusual for someone to feel sick, to have to stop because of fatigue or of some mishap along the way.  It is precisely in such moments that we see how we are walking together: whether we are truly companions on the journey, or merely individuals on the same path, looking after our own interests and leaving others to “make do”. For this reason, on the thirty-first World Day of the Sick, as the whole Church journeys along the synodal path, I invite all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness.

11.02.23

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Today we remember Saint Bakhita, patroness of victims of human trafficking. I join with you in celebrating the ninth International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking, on the theme Journeying in dignity, which involves young people as protagonists.

I address you, young people, in a special way: I encourage you to care for dignity, yours and of every person you meet. I know it was you who chose this theme: “Journeying in dignity”. It is very important: it indicates a broad horizon for your commitment against human trafficking: human dignity. In this way you can contribute to keeping hope alive, and I would also add joy, which I invite you to preserve in your hearts, along with the Word of God, because the true joy is Christ!

08.02.23 hte

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Last week I visited two African countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan. I thank God for permitting me to make this long-desired journey. Two “dreams”: to visit the Congolese people, custodians of an immense country, the green heart of Africa: together with Amazonia, they are the two lungs of the world. A land rich in resources and bloodied by a war that never ends, because there is always someone to fan the flames. And to visit the South Sudanese people, in a pilgrimage of peace together with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Moderator General of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields: we went together to bear witness that it is possible, and a duty, to collaborate in diversity, especially if one shares faith in Jesus Christ.

08.02.23 e

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

Today I would like to make my own the words that the Apostle Paul addressed to the community of Corinth in the second reading and repeat them here before you: “When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:1-2). Yes, Paul’s concern is also mine, as I gather here with you in the name of Jesus Christ, the God of love, the God who achieved peace through his cross; Jesus, the God crucified for us all; Jesus, crucified in those who suffer; Jesus, crucified in the lives of so many of you, in so many people in this country; Jesus, the risen Lord, the victor over evil and death. I have come here to proclaim him and to confirm you in him, for the message of Christ is a message of hope. Jesus knows your anguish and the hope you bear in your hearts, the joys and struggles that mark your lives, the darkness that assails you and the faith that, like a song in the night, you raise to heaven. Jesus knows you and loves you. If we remain in him, we must never fear, because for us too, every cross will turn into a resurrection, every sadness into hope, and every lament into dancing.

I would like to reflect, then, on the words of life that our Lord Jesus spoke to us in today’s Gospel: “You are the salt of the earth... You are the light of the world” (Mt 5:13-14). What do these images say to us, as disciples of Christ?

First of all, that we are the salt of the earth. Salt is used to season food. It is the unseen ingredient that gives flavour to everything. Precisely for this reason, since ancient times, salt has been a symbol of wisdom, a virtue that cannot be seen, but that adds zest to life, which without it becomes insipid, tasteless. Yet what kind of wisdom does Jesus mean? He uses the image of salt immediately after teaching his disciples the Beatitudes. We see, then, that the Beatitudes are the salt of the Christian life, because they bring the wisdom of heaven down to earth. They revolutionize the standards of this world and our usual way of thinking. And what do they say? In a word, they tell us that to be blessed, to be happy and fulfilled, we must not aim to be strong, rich and powerful, but humble, meek, merciful; to do no evil to anyone, but to be peacemakers for everyone. This, Jesus says, is the wisdom of a disciple; it is what gives flavour to the world around us. Let us remember this: if we put the Beatitudes into practice, if we embody the wisdom of Christ, we will give savour not only to our own lives, but also to the life of society and of the country in which we live.

Salt does not only bring out flavor; it also has another function, which was essential at the time of Christ: it preserves food so that it does not spoil and go bad. The Bible had said that there is one “food”, one essential good that is to be preserved above all others, and that is the covenant with God. So in those days, whenever an offering was made to the Lord, a little salt was added to it. Let us hear what Scripture says about this: “You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be lacking from your cereal offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt” (Lev 2:13). Salt thus served as a reminder of our basic need to preserve our relationship with God, because he is faithful to us, and his covenant with us is incorruptible, inviolable and enduring (cf. Num 18:19; 2 Chr 13:5). It follows that every disciple of Jesus, as the salt of the earth, is a witness to the covenant that God has made and that we celebrate in every Mass: a new, eternal and unbreakable covenant (cf. 1 Cor 11:25; Heb 9), and a love for us that cannot be shaken even by our infidelity.

Brothers and sisters, we are witnesses to this wonder. In ancient times, when people or peoples established a pact of friendship with one another, they often sealed it by exchanging a little salt. As the salt of the earth, we are called to bear witness to the covenant with God with joy and gratitude, and thus show that we are people capable of creating bonds of friendship and fraternal living. People capable of building good human relationships as a way of curbing the corruption of evil, the disease of division, the filth of fraudulent business dealings and the plague of injustice.

Today I would like to thank you, because you are the salt of the earth in this country. Yet, when you consider its many wounds, the violence that increases the venom of hatred, and the injustice that causes misery and poverty, you may feel small and powerless. Whenever that temptation assails you, try looking at salt and its tiny grains. Salt is a tiny ingredient and, once placed on food, it disappears, it dissolves; yet precisely in that way it seasons the whole dish. In the same way, even though we are tiny and frail, even when our strength seems paltry before the magnitude of our problems and the blind fury of violence, we Christians are able to make a decisive contribution to changing history. Jesus wants us to be like salt: a mere pinch dissolves and gives a different flavour to everything. Consequently, we cannot step back, because without that little pinch, without our small contribution, everything becomes insipid. So let us start from the little things, the essential things, not from what may appear in the history books, but from what changes history. In the name of Jesus and of his Beatitudes, let us lay down the weapons of hatred and revenge, in order to take up those of prayer and charity. Let us overcome the dislikes and aversions that over time have become chronic and risk pitting tribes and ethnic groups against one another. Let us learn to apply the salt of forgiveness to our wounds; salt burns but it also heals. Even if our hearts bleed for the wrongs we have suffered, let us refuse, once and for all, to repay evil with evil, and we will grow healthy within. Let us accept one another and love one another with sincerity and generosity, as God loves us. Let us cherish the good that we are, and not allow ourselves to be corrupted by evil!

Let us now pass to the second image used by Jesus, which is light: You are the light of the world. A great prophecy was told of Israel: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Is 49:6). Now that prophecy has been fulfilled, because God the Father has sent his Son, who is the light of the world (cf. Jn 8:12), the true light that enlightens every person and every people, the light that shines in the darkness and dispels every cloud of gloom (cf. Jn 1:5.9). Jesus, the light of the world, tells his disciples that they, too, are the light of the world. This means that, when we receive the light of Christ, the light that is Christ, we become “luminous”; we radiate the light of God!

Jesus goes on to say: “A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house” (Mt 5:15). Again, this was a familiar image in those days. Many villages in Galilee were built on hillsides and were visible from a great distance. Lamps in houses were placed high up, so that they could illumine all the corners of a room. When a lamp was extinguished, it was covered with a piece of terracotta called a “bushel”, which deprived the flame of oxygen and thus put out its light.

Brothers and sisters, it is clear what Jesus means by asking us to be the light of the world: we, who are his disciples, are called to shine forth like a city set on a hill, like a lamp whose flame may never be extinguished. In other words, before we worry about the darkness surrounding us, before we hope that the shadows around us will lighten, we are called to radiate light, to give brightness to our cities, our villages and homes, our acquaintances and all our daily activities by our lives and good works. The Lord will give us strength, the strength to be light in him, so that everyone will see our good works, and seeing them, as Jesus reminds us, they will rejoice in God and give him glory. If we live like sons and daughters, brothers and sisters on earth, people will come to know that all of us have a Father in heaven. We are being asked, then, to burn with love, never to let our light be extinguished, never to let the oxygen of charity fade from our lives so that the works of evil can take away the pure air of our witness. This country, so beautiful yet ravaged by violence, needs the light that each one of you has, or better, the light that each one of you is.

Dear brothers and sisters, I pray that you will be salt that spreads, dissolves and seasons South Sudan with the fraternal taste of the Gospel. May your Christian communities shine radiantly, so that, like cities built on a hill, they will shed the light of goodness on all and show that it is beautiful and possible to live with generosity and self-giving, to have hope, and together to build a reconciled future. Brothers and sisters, I am with you and I assure you of my prayer that you will experience the joy of the Gospel, the savour and the light that the Lord, “the God of peace” (Phil 4:9), the “God of all consolation” (2 Cor 1:3), desires to pour out upon every one of you.

05.02.23 m

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

From this beloved land, wracked by violence, many prayers have now been raised to heaven. Many different voices have united to form a single voice. Together, as God’s holy people, we have prayed for this people and its suffering. As Christians, prayer is the first and most important thing we are called to do in order to work for the good and to find the strength needed to persevere on our journey. To pray, to work and to journey: let us reflect on these three verbs.

04.02.23 ep e

Thank you for your prayers, your testimonies and your singing! I have been thinking of you for a long time, with a growing desire to have this meeting, to see you face to face, to shake your hands and to embrace you. Now at last I am here, together with my brothers on this pilgrimage of peace, to express to you all my closeness, all my affection. I am with here you, and I suffer for you and with you.

Joseph, you asked a crucial question: “Why do we have to suffer in a camp for displaced persons?” Why…? Why do so many children and young people like you end up here, rather than studying in school or playing in a nice open place? You answered your own question, when you said that it is “because of the ongoing conflicts in the country”. Due to the devastation caused by human violence, as well as that caused by the floods, millions of our brothers and sisters like you, including many mothers with children, have had to leave their lands and abandon their villages and their homes. Sadly, in this war-torn country, being a displaced person or a refugee has become a common and collective experience.

That is why I want to renew my forceful and heartfelt appeal to end all conflict and to resume the peace process in a serious way, so that violence can end and people can return to living in dignity. Only with peace, stability and justice can there be development and social reintegration. There is no room for further delay: great numbers of children born in recent years have known only the reality of camps for displaced persons. They have no memory of what it means to have a home; they are losing their connection with their native land, their roots and their traditions.

The future cannot lie in refugee camps. As you said, Johnson, there is a need for all children like yourself to have the opportunity to go to school – and to have a field to play football! There is a need for you to grow as an open society, for different groups to mingle and to form a single people by embracing the challenges of integration, even learning the languages spoken throughout the country and not just those in your particular ethnic group. This means embracing the marvellous risk of knowing and accepting those who are different, discovering the beauty of a reconciled fraternity and experiencing the thrilling challenge of freely shaping your own future along with that of the entire community. It is absolutely essential to avoid ostracizing groups and ghettoizing human beings. To meet all these challenges, however, there is a need for peace. And for the help of many, indeed of everyone.

I would like to thank Deputy Special Representative Sara Beysolow Nyanti for telling us that today represents an opportunity for people to realize what has been going on for years in this country. A country with the greatest enduring refugee crisis on the continent: at least four million children of this land are displaced; food insecurity and malnutrition affect two-thirds of the population, and forecasts predict a humanitarian tragedy that could further worsen in the course of this year. So I would like to thank you, above all because you and many others did not sit around analysing the situation, but went straight to work. You, Madam, have travelled throughout the country; you have looked into the eyes of mothers and witnessed the pain they feel for the situation of their children. I was moved when you said that, despite all that they are suffering, smiles and hope have never faded from their faces.

I also agree with what you said about them: mothers, women are the key to transforming the country. If they receive the proper opportunities, through their industriousness and their natural gift of protecting life, they will have the ability to change the face of South Sudan, to give it a peaceful and cohesive development! I ask you, I ask all the people of these lands, to ensure that women are protected, respected, valued and honoured. Please, protect, respect, appreciate and honour every woman, every girl, young woman, mother and grandmother. Otherwise, there will be no future.

Brothers and sisters, once more I look out at you. I see your eyes, weary but bright, eyes that have not lost hope. I see your mouths, which have not lost the strength to pray and to sing. I see you with empty hands but hearts full of faith. You bear the burden of a painful past, yet you never stop dreaming of a better future. In our meeting today, we would like to give wings to your hope. We hope and believe that now, even in the camps for displaced persons, where sadly you are forced to live due to the situation in your country, a new seed can sprout, as from the dry and barren soil: a new seed that will bear rich fruit.

That is what I want to tell you: that you are the seed of a new South Sudan, a seed for the fertile and lush growth of this country. You, from all your different ethnic groups, you who have suffered and are still suffering, you who do not want to respond to evil with more evil. You, who choose fraternity and forgiveness, are even now cultivating a better tomorrow. A tomorrow that is being born today, wherever you find yourselves, from your ability to cooperate, to weave webs of communion and paths of reconciliation with those who, while different from you in terms of ethnicity and origin, are your neighbours. Brothers and sisters, be seeds of hope, which make it possible for us already to glimpse the tree that one day, hopefully in the near future, will bear fruit. Yes, you will be the trees that absorb the pollution of years of violence and restore the oxygen of fraternity. True, right now you are “planted” where you don’t want to be, but precisely from this situation of hardship and uncertainty, you can reach out to those around you and experience that you all are rooted in the one human family. From here, you must make a new start, to realize that you are all brothers and sisters, children on earth of God in heaven, the Father of us all.

Dear friends, to speak of roots reminds us that every plant springs up from a seed. It is a beautiful thing that people here care deeply about their roots. I remember reading that in these lands “the roots must never be forgotten”, because “the ancestors remind us who we are and what our path should be... Without them we are lost, frightened and without a compass. There is no future without a past” (C. CARLASSARE, La capanna di Padre Carlo. Comboniano tra i Nuer, 2020, 65). In South Sudan, young people grow up benefitting from the stories of the elderly and, although the chapter of recent years has been one of violence, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to launch a new chapter, starting with yourselves. A new chapter of encounter, which does not forget past sufferings, but radiates the joyful light of fraternity; a chapter that does not focus only on reports of tragedy, but on the ardent desire for peace. May you, young people of different ethnicities, write the first pages of this new chapter! Although conflict, violence and hatred have replaced good memories on the first pages of the life of this Republic, you must be the ones to rewrite its history as a history of peace! I thank you for your strength and perseverance, and for all the good you do, which is so pleasing to God and enriches each day of your lives.

In addition, I would like to address a word of gratitude to all those who help you, often in conditions of hardship, but also in emergency situations. I thank the ecclesial communities for their efforts, which deserve to be supported. I thank also the missionaries and the humanitarian and international organizations, in particular the United Nations, for the important work they do. To be sure, a country cannot survive on external means of support, especially if it possesses a territory so rich in resources! At the present time, however, those means of support are badly needed. I would also like to honour the many humanitarian workers who have lost their lives, and to plead for respect for those who offer help and for the structures that assist the population; they should not become targets of assaults and vandalism. Together with urgently needed aid, I believe that it is very important, in the future, to accompany the population on the path of development, for example by helping them to learn up-to-date practices in the areas of agriculture and livestock management, so as to facilitate a more independent growth. I plead with everyone from the heart: let us help South Sudan; let us not abandon its population. They have suffered and they continue to suffer so greatly!

In conclusion, I would like to mention the many South Sudanese refugees living outside the country and those who cannot return because their territories have been occupied. I am close to them and I trust that they can once again take an active role in shaping the future of their land and contribute to its development in a constructive and peaceful manner. Nyakuor Rebecca, you asked me for a special blessing upon the children of South Sudan, precisely so that all of you might grow up together in peace. The three of us, as brothers, will give the blessing: together with my brother Justin and my brother Iain, we will give all of you the blessing. With it comes the blessing of so many of our Christian brothers and sisters in the world, who embrace and encourage you, knowing that you, your faith, your inner strength and your dreams of peace, radiate all the beauty of our shared humanity.

04.02.23

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

In my address yesterday, I drew upon the image of the waters of the Nile, which flows through your country, as if it were its backbone. In the Bible, water is often associated with God’s activity in creation, his compassion in quenching our thirst when we wander through the desert, and his mercy in cleansing us when we are mired in sin. In baptism, he sanctified us “through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). From the same biblical perspective, I would like to take another look at the waters of the Nile. Merged with those waters are the tears of a people immersed in suffering and pain, and tormented by violence, who can pray like the psalmist, “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept” (Ps 137:1). Indeed, the waters of that great river collect the sighs and sufferings of your communities, they collect the pain of so many shattered lives, they collect the tragedy of a people in flight, the sorrow and fear in the hearts and eyes of so many women and children. We can see this fear in the eyes of children. At the same time, though, the waters of the Nile remind us of the story of Moses and thus they also speak of liberation and salvation. From those waters, Moses was saved and, by leading his own people through the Red Sea, he became for them a means of liberation, an icon of the saving help of God who sees the affliction of his children, hears their cry and comes down to set them free (cf. Ex 3:7). Remembering the story of Moses, who led God’s people through the desert, let us ask ourselves what it means for us to be ministers of God in a land scarred by war, hatred, violence, and poverty. How can we exercise our ministry in this land, along the banks of a river bathed in so much innocent blood, among the tear-stained faces of the people entrusted to us? This is the question. And when I speak of ministry, I do so in the broad sense: priestly and diaconal ministry and also catechetical ministry, the ministry of teaching, which so many consecrated men and women, as well as the lay faithful, carry out.

To try to answer this, I would like to reflect on two aspects of Moses’ character: his meekness and his intercession. I think these two aspects concern our lives here.

04.02.23 be

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

I am pleased to meet with you and I offer you my heartfelt gratitude for your warm welcome. I thank Archbishop Utembi Tapa for his kind words of greeting in your name. I am grateful for the way in which you courageously proclaim the consolation of the Lord, walking in the midst of your people and sharing their hardships and their hopes.

It has been a joy for me to spend these days in your country which, with its large forest, represents the “green heart” of Africa, a lung for the whole world. The importance of this natural heritage reminds us that we are called to protect the beauty of creation and to defend it from the wounds inflicted by greed and selfishness. This immense verdant expanse that is your forest is also an image that speaks to our Christian life. As a Church we need to breathe the pure air of the Gospel, to dispel the tainted air of worldliness, to safeguard the young heart of faith. That is how I imagine the African Church and that is how I see this Congolese Church: a young, dynamic and joyful Church, motivated by missionary zeal, by the good news that God loves us and that Jesus is Lord. Yours is a Church present in the lived history of this people, deeply rooted in its daily life, and in the forefront of charity. It is a community capable of attracting others, filled with infectious enthusiasm and therefore, like your forests, with plenty of “oxygen”. Thank you, because you are a lung that helps the universal Church breathe!

03.02.23 be

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

I am happy to be with you today, on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, a day when we pray in a special way for consecrated life. Like Simeon, we all await the light of the Lord to brighten the darkness of our lives. Even more, we all desire to have the same experience that Simeon had in the Temple of Jerusalem: to hold Jesus in our arms. To hold him in our arms, so that we can contemplate him and hold him close to our hearts. When we place Jesus at the centre of our lives, our outlook changes, and despite all our efforts and difficulties, we feel enveloped by his light, comforted by his Spirit, encouraged by his word and sustained by his love.

As I say this, I think of Cardinal Ambongo’s words of welcome, for which I thank him. He pointed out the “enormous challenges” faced by those who live out their commitment to the priesthood and consecrated life in this land marked by “difficult and often dangerous conditions” and by great suffering. Yet, as he noted, there is also great joy in the service of the Gospel, and vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life are plentiful. This is due to the abundance of God’s grace, which works precisely in weakness (cf. 2 Cor 12:9), and which makes you, together with the lay faithful, capable of generating hope in the often painful situations in which your people live.

02.02.23 pme

Thank you for your show of affection, your dancing and your testimonies! I am delighted to meet you face to face, to greet you and to bless you as your hands were lifted up to heaven in celebration.

Now I would like to ask you, for a little while, not to look at me but to look at your hands. Open the palms of your hands. Look at them closely. Dear friends, God has placed the gift of life, the future of society and the future of this great country in those hands of yours. Dear brother, dear sister, do your hands not seem small and frail, empty and unsuited to so great a task? Let me tell you something: your hands all look alike, but none of them is exactly the same. No one has hands just like yours, and that is a sign that you are a unique, unrepeatable and incomparable treasure. No one in history can replace you. So ask yourself, what are my hands for? For building up or for tearing down, for giving or for grabbing, for loving or for hating? Notice how you can squeeze your hand, closing it to make a fist. Or you can open it, to offer it to God and to others. That has always been the fundamental choice we have to make, ever since ancient times, ever since the days when Abel generously offered the fruits of his labour, while Cain “raised his hand against his brother… and killed him” (Gen 4:8). Young people, you who dream of a different future: from your hands, tomorrow can be born; from your hands, peace so lacking in this world can at last come about. Yet what are we to do concretely? I would like to suggest some “ingredients for the future”: five of them, each corresponding to a finger on your hand.

The thumb, the finger closest to our heart, symbolizes prayer, which is the driving force in our life. Prayer may seem like something unreal and far from our concrete problems and issues. Yet prayer is the primary ingredient, the basic ingredient for the future, because by ourselves we cannot go very far. We are not all-powerful and, whenever we think we are, we end up failing miserably. Think of a tree, if we take away its roots. Even if that tree is large and robust, it cannot remain standing on its own. This is why we need to sink our roots in prayer and in listening to the word of God. Prayer is what allows us to grow deeply, day by day, to bear fruit, and to turn the tainted air we breathe into life-giving oxygen. Every tree needs one simple and basic element if it is to grow. That element is water. Prayer is “water for the soul”: it is hidden, unseen, yet it gives life. Those who pray grow inwardly; they are able to lift their gaze on high and to remember that we are made for heaven.

Dear brother, dear sister, we need prayer, a living prayer. Do not speak to Jesus like some far-off being who inspires awe and fear, but rather as your best friend, someone who has given his life for you. Jesus knows you, he believes in you and he loves you, always. When you contemplate him hanging on the cross for your salvation, you will come to see how precious you are to him. You can entrust to him your crosses, your fears, your anxieties, casting them upon his cross. He will embrace them all. He did this two thousand years ago; the cross you are carrying today was already a part of his cross. Do not be afraid, then, to take a cross in your hands, to press it to your heart, and to hand over all your tears to Jesus. And do not forget to contemplate his face, the face of a God who is young, alive and risen! Yes, Jesus has triumphed over evil; he made of his cross the bridge to the resurrection. So, raise your hands to him daily, praise him and bless him. Tell him the hopes of your heart, share with him the deepest secrets of your life: the person you love, the hurts you carry within, the dreams that you hold in your heart. Tell him about your neighbours, your teachers, your friends and colleagues; tell him about your country. God loves this kind of living, concrete and heartfelt prayer. It allows him to intervene, to enter into your daily life in a special way, to come with his “power of peace”. That power has a name. Do you know who it is? It is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Giver of life. The Holy Spirit is the driving force of peace, the true power of peace. That is why prayer is the most powerful weapon there is. It brings you the consolation and hope that come from God. It always opens up new possibilities and helps you overcome all your fears. Yes, prayer conquers fear and enables us to take our future into our hands. Do you believe this? Do you want to make prayer your secret, as refreshing water for the soul, as the one weapon you carry, as a travelling companion on each day’s journey?

Now let us look at the second finger, the forefinger. We use our index finger to point things out to others. Others, the community: this is the second ingredient. Dear friends, do not ruin your youth by becoming isolated and closed in on yourselves. Think about this often and you will find happiness, because community is the way to make us feel good about ourselves and to be faithful to our true calling. Going it alone may seem enticing, but it ends up leaving us only with great emptiness. Think about drugs: you end up hiding yourself from others, from an authentic life, for the sake of feeling all-powerful; but ultimately you find yourself deprived of everything. Think too about addiction to the occult and witchcraft. This form of dependency imprisons us in fear, vengeance and anger. Do not yield to illusions that promise happiness, sand castles built on appearances, easy money or distorted forms of religion.

Beware of the temptation to point a finger at someone, to exclude another person because he or she is different; beware of regionalism, tribalism, or anything that makes you feel secure in your own group, but at the same time is unconcerned with the life of the community. You know what happens: first, you believe in prejudices about others, then you justify hatred, then violence, and in the end, you find yourself in the middle of a war. But let me ask you something. Have you ever spoken with people from other groups or have you always kept to yourself? Have you ever heard other people’s stories or drawn near to their sufferings? Certainly, it is easier to condemn people than to understand them; but God’s method of building a better world is to embrace those we think of as “other”, to identify with them, to connect as a community. That is what it means to build up the Church: to broaden our horizons, to see others as our neighbours and to care about them. Do you see someone lonely, suffering or left out? Approach him or her. Not because you want that person to see what a nice person you are, but to share your smile and to offer your friendship.

David, you mentioned that young people want to be connected to others, but that social media often confuses you. It is true, virtual reality is not enough, we cannot be content just interfacing with people who are far away and sometimes not even real. Life is more than just tapping a screen with a finger. It is sad to see young people spending hours staring at a phone; then, if you look at their faces, you see that they are not smiling, that they look weary and bored. Nothing and no one can ever be a replacement for the energy that we get from being together, the sparkle in our eyes, the joy of exchanging ideas! Talking, listening to each other is essential: on the screen, everyone scrolls down for what they find interesting. So try to spend time together and experience the beauty of letting others amaze you with their stories and their experiences.

Let us now try to feel very concretely what it means to build community. Just for a few moments, hold hands with whoever is beside you. Imagine yourselves as one Church, a single people. Realize that your own welfare depends on the welfare of others, which is multiplied by the whole. Have a sense of what it means to be protected by your brother and sister, by someone who accepts you as you are and is concerned about you. And know that you are responsible for others, as a vital part of a great fraternal network in which everyone supports everyone else, and that you are indispensable. Yes, you are indispensable and responsible for your Church and your country. You are part of a greater history, one that calls you to take an active role as a builder of communion, a champion of fraternity, an indomitable dreamer of a more united world.

You are not alone in this adventure: the whole Church, throughout the world, is cheering for you. Is it a difficult challenge? Yes, but you can rise to it. You also have some friends in the stands who are encouraging you towards these goals. Do you know who they are? The saints in heaven. I think, for example, of Blessed Isidore Bakanja, of Blessed Marie-Clémentine Anuarite, and of Saint Kizito and his companions. They were witnesses of the faith, martyrs who never succumbed to the logic of violence, but proclaimed by their lives the power of love and forgiveness. Their names, written in heaven, will long endure in history, whereas narrow-mindedness and violence will always turn against those who practise them. I know you have repeatedly shown that, even at great sacrifice, you are ready to stand up to defend human rights and the hope of a better future for everyone in the country. I thank you for this and I honour the memory of all those – and they are many – who have lost their lives or their health for these noble causes. And I encourage you to go forward together, fearlessly, as a community!

Prayer and community; we come to the middle finger, which is higher than the others, as if to remind us of something essential. It is the key ingredient for a future worthy of our great expectations. And that is: honesty! To be a Christian is to witness to Christ. The first way to do this is by living virtuously, as Christ desires. This means not getting entangled in the snares of corruption. Christians cannot fail to be honest; otherwise, they betray their identity. Without honesty, we are not disciples and witnesses of Jesus; we are pagans, idolaters who worship our own ego rather than God, people who use others rather than serving them.

I wonder, though – how do we stop the spread of corruption, that seems never to stop expanding? Saint Paul helps us with a simple and brilliant phrase that you can say to yourselves over and over, until you know it by heart. Here it is: “Do not be overcome by evil; but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). Do not be overcome by evil. Do not let yourselves be manipulated by individuals or groups that try to use you to keep your country in the grip of violence and instability, so that they can continue to control it without answering to anyone. But overcome evil with good. May you be the ones who transform society, the ones who turn evil into good, hatred into love, war into peace. Do you want to be that kind of person? If you do, then it is possible. Do you know why? Because each one of you has a treasure that no one can steal from you. It is your power to make choices. In fact, you are the choices you make, and you can always choose to do the right thing. We have the freedom to choose. Do not let your life be dragged along by the current of corruption. Do not let yourselves be borne along like dead branches in a contaminated river. Be indignant, but never give in to the persuasive but poisonous temptations of corruption.

I think of the witness given by a young person like yourselves, Floribert Bwana Chui, who fifteen years ago, at only twenty-six years old, was killed in Goma for having blocked the passage of spoiled foodstuffs that would have been harmful for people’s health. He could easily have turned a blind eye; nobody would have found out, and he might even have gotten ahead as a result. But, since he was a Christian, he prayed. He thought of others and he chose to be honest, saying no to the filth of corruption. That is what it means to keep your hands clean, for hands that traffic in easy money get stained with blood. If someone offers you a bribe, or promises you favours and lots of money, do not fall into the trap. Do not be deceived; do not be sucked into the swamp of evil. Do not be overcome by evil! Do not trust shady financial schemes that plunge you into the darkness. To be honest is to shine like the day; it is to radiate the light of God. It is to live the beatitude of justice: overcome evil with good!

Now we have reached the fourth finger, the ring finger, on which wedding rings are worn. If you think about it, the ring finger is also the weakest finger, the one that is the hardest for us to raise. It reminds us that the goals that bring us the greatest fulfilment in life, above all love, involve weakness, weariness and hardship. These have to be accepted, confronted with patience and trust, without letting ourselves get weighed down by pettiness, as, for example, when the beautiful symbolism of a dowry is reduced purely to a financial arrangement. In our frailty and in our moments of crisis, what is the power that makes us go forward? Forgiveness. Because forgiving means being able to start over. To forgive does not mean forgetting the past; it means refusing to repeat it. To forgive is to change the course of history. It is to raise up those who have fallen. It is to accept the idea that no one is perfect and that everyone, not just myself, has the right to make a new start.

Dear friends, to create a new future we need to give and receive forgiveness. That is what Christians do: they do not merely love those who love them, but they choose to halt the spiral of personal and tribal vendettas with forgiveness. I think, for example, of Blessed Isidore Bakanja, your brother who was brutally tortured because he refused to conceal his piety and proposed Christianity to other young people. He never yielded to feelings of hatred and, as he gave up his life, he forgave his torturer. Those who forgive bring Jesus even to places where he is not welcomed; they bring love to places where love is rejected. Those who forgive build the future. But how do we become capable of forgiveness? By first allowing ourselves to be forgiven by God. Every time we confess our sins, we receive in our hearts the power that changes history. God always forgives us, always and freely! And we are then told, as the Gospel says: to “go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). Go forth without resentment, without venom, without hatred. Go forth and make God’s ways your own, for he alone can renew history. Go forth and believe that we can always begin again with God. We can always start over, we can always forgive!

Prayer, community, honesty, forgiveness. We have now come to the last and smallest finger. You may be tempted to say: But I am so little, and whatever good I can do is but a drop in the ocean. But it is precisely littleness, our decision to become little, that attracts God. The key here is service. Those who serve make themselves little. Like a tiny seed, they seem to be swallowed up in the earth, and yet they bring forth fruit. Jesus tells us that service is the force that transforms the world. So the little question that you can tie on this finger each day is: What can I do for others? In other words, how can I serve the Church, my community, my country? Olivier, you told us that, in some isolated regions, you, the catechists, daily serve the faith communities and that, in the Church, this should be “everyone’s business”. It is true, and it is a beautiful thing to serve others, to care for them, to do something without expecting anything in return, as God does with us. I would like to thank you, dear catechists: for so many communities, you are as vital as water; always help them to grow by the integrity of your prayer and your service. To serve is not to sit idly by; it is to get up and go. Many get up and go because they want to pursue their own interests. Do not be afraid, yourselves, to pursue goodness, to invest in goodness and to proclaim the Gospel, preparing yourselves enthusiastically and suitably, and initiating long-term projects. And do not be afraid to make your voices heard, because in your hands is not only the future, but the present as well. Be at the centre of the present moment!

Dear friends, I have left you five words to help you to discern, amid all the many attractive messages you hear, what is really important in life. For in life, as in driving, disorder and confusion often create unnecessary traffic jams that waste our time and energy, and fuel anger. Rather, we do well, even amid confusion, to give our hearts and lives clarity, to make realistic plans and have stable points of reference, in order to set out for a different kind of future, refusing to heed the empty promises of opportunism. Dear friends, young people and catechists, I thank you for what you do and for who you are. Thank you for your enthusiasm, your light and your hope! Now I would like to tell you one last thing: never grow discouraged! Jesus believes in you and he will never leave you stranded. Hold fast to the joy that you feel today; never let it fade. As Floribert told his friends when they were feeling low: “Take the Gospel and read it. It will console you; it will give you joy”. All of you, together, leave behind the pessimism that paralyzes. The Democratic Republic of the Congo expects from your hands a different future, for that future is in your hands. May your country once more become, thanks to you, a garden of fraternity, the heart of peace and freedom in Africa! Thank you!

02.02.23 y

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

I greet you with affection and thank you for your songs, your testimonies and for everything that you have told me, but especially for everything that you are doing! In this country, where the sound of violence is heard like the loud crash of a felled tree, you are the forest that quietly grows each day and makes the air clean and breathable. Naturally, a falling tree makes more noise, but God loves and blesses the generosity that silently sprouts and bears fruit, and he looks with joy upon all those who serve the needy. That is how goodness grows: in the simplicity of hands and hearts stretched out to others and in the courage of small steps that approach the poor and vulnerable in the name of Jesus. The proverb Cecilia quoted is really true: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.

01.02.23 ce

Excerpt below, for the full transcript click on the picture link above

Thank you for your courage in offering these testimonies. We continue to be shocked to hear of the inhumane violence that you have seen with your eyes and personally experienced. We can only weep in silence, for we are left without words. Bunia, Beni-Butembo, Goma, Masisi, Rutshuru, Bukavu, Uvira: these are places that the international media hardly ever mention. In those places, and elsewhere, so many of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of our one human family, have been held hostage to the whims of the powerful, those with the most potent weapons, weapons that continue to circulate. Today my heart is in the east of this immense country, which will have no peace until peace reigns there, in its eastern part.

To you, dear inhabitants of the East, I want to say: I am close to you. Your tears are my tears; your pain is my pain. To every family that grieves or is displaced by the burning of villages and other war crimes, to the survivors of sexual violence and to every injured child and adult, I say: I am with you; I want to bring you God’s caress. He gazes upon you with tenderness and compassion. While the violent treat you as pawns, our heavenly Father sees your dignity, and to each of you he says: “You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you” (Is 43:4). Brothers and sisters, the Church is and will always be on your side. God loves you; he has not forgotten you. But men and women should remember you too!

01.02.23 ve

Bandeko, bobóto [Brothers and sisters, peace be with you]

R/ Bondeko [Fraternity]

Bondéko [Fraternity]

R/Esengo [Joy]

Esengo, joy: to see and encounter you is a great joy. I have very much looked forward to this moment; we had to wait for a new year! Thank you for being here!

The Gospel has just told us that the joy of the disciples on the evening of Easter was also great, and that this joy exploded “when they saw the Lord” (Jn 20:20). In this atmosphere of joy and wonder, the Risen Jesus speaks to them. What does he tell them? Above all, four simple words: “Peace be with you!” (v. 19). A greeting, but more than a greeting: it is a gift. Because the peace, the peace proclaimed by the angels on the night of his birth in Bethlehem (cf. Lk 2:14), the peace Jesus promised to leave his disciples (cf. Jn 14:27), is now, for the first time, solemnly given to them. The peace of Jesus, which is also given to us in every Mass, is an Easter peace: it comes from the resurrection, because the Lord first had to defeat our enemies, sin and death, and reconcile the world to the Father. He had to experience our solitude and abandonment, our hell, embracing and removing the distance that separates us from life and hope. Now, after removing the distance between heaven and earth, between God and man, Jesus gives his peace to his disciples.

Let us put ourselves in their place. That day they were completely mortified by the scandal of the cross, interiorly wounded from having fled and abandoned Jesus, dismayed by the way his life had ended and fearful that their lives would end in the same way. They were feeling guilty, frustrated, sorrowful and afraid… However, Jesus comes and proclaims peace, even as his disciples’ hearts were downcast. He announces life, even as they felt surrounded by death. In other words, the peace of Jesus arrived at the very moment when, suddenly and to their surprise, everything seemed to be over for them, without even a glimmer of peace. That is what the Lord does: he surprises us; he takes us by the hand when we are falling; he lifts us up when we are hitting rock bottom. Brothers and sisters, with Jesus, evil never wins, evil never has the last word. “For he is our peace” (Eph 2:14), and his peace is always triumphant. Consequently, we who belong to Jesus must never yield to sorrow; we must not permit resignation and fatalism to take hold of us. Even though that atmosphere reigns all around us, it must not be so for us. In a world disheartened by violence and war, Christians must be like Jesus. As if to insist on the point, Jesus told the disciples once more: Peace be with you! (cf. Jn 20:19, 21). We are called to make our own the Lord’s unexpected and prophetic message of peace and proclaim it before the world.

At the same time, we can ask ourselves: how can we safeguard and cultivate the peace of Jesus? He himself points to three wellsprings of peace, three sources from which we can draw as we continue to nurture peace. They are forgiveness, community and mission.

Let us look at the first source: forgiveness. Jesus says to his disciples: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them” (v. 23). Yet before giving the apostles the power to forgive, he forgives them, not with words but with an act, the first act of the Risen Lord. The Gospel tells us that, “he showed them his hands and his side” (v. 20). Jesus showed them his wounds. He showed them his wounds, because forgiveness is born from wounds. It is born when our wounds do not leave scars of hatred, but become the means by which we make room for others and accept their weaknesses. Our weakness becomes an opportunity, and forgiveness becomes the path to peace. This does not mean that we turn around and act as if nothing is changed; instead, we open our hearts in love to others. That is what Jesus does: faced with the sadness and shame of those who had denied him and fled, he shows his wounds and opens up the wellspring of mercy. He does not multiply words, but opens wide his wounded heart, in order to tell us that he is always wounded with love for us.

Brothers, sisters, when guilt and sadness overwhelm us, when things do not go well, we know where to look: to the wounds of Jesus, who is ever ready to forgive us with his infinite, wounded love. He knows your wounds; he knows the wounds of your country, your people, your land! They are wounds that ache, continually infected by hatred and violence, while the medicine of justice and the balm of hope never seem to arrive. My brother, my sister, Jesus suffers with you. He sees the wounds you carry within, and he desires to console and heal you; he offers you his wounded heart. To your heart, God repeats the words he spoke today through the prophet Isaiah: “I will heal them; I will lead them and repay them with comfort” (Is 57:18).

Together, we believe that Jesus always gives us the possibility of being forgiven and starting over, but also the strength to forgive ourselves, others and history! That is what Christ wants. He wants to anoint us with his forgiveness, to give us peace and the courage to forgive others in turn, the courage to grant others a great amnesty of the heart. What great good it does us to cleanse our hearts of anger and remorse, of every trace of resentment and hostility! Dear brothers and sisters, may today be a time of grace for you to accept and experience Jesus’ forgiveness! May it be the right time for those of you who bear heavy burdens in your heart and long for them to be lifted so that you can breathe freely once again. And may it be a good time for all of you in this country who call yourselves Christians but engage in violence. The Lord is telling you: “Lay down your arms, embrace mercy”. To all the wounded and oppressed of this people, he is saying: “Do not be afraid to bury your wounds in mine”. Let us do this, brothers and sisters. Do not be afraid to take the crucifix from your neck and out of your pockets, to take it between your hands and hold it close to your heart, in order to share your wounds with the wounds of Jesus. Then, when you return home, take the crucifix from the wall and embrace it. Give Christ the chance to heal your heart, hand your past over to him, along with all your fears and troubles. What a beautiful thing it is to open the doors of your heart and your home to his peace! And why not write those words of his on your walls, wear them on your clothing, and put them as a sign on your houses: Peace be with you! Displaying these words will be a prophetic statement to your country, and a blessing of the Lord upon all whom you meet. Peace be with you: let us receive forgiveness from God and in turn forgive one another!

Let us look now at the second source of peace: community. The Risen Jesus does not speak just to one of his disciples; he appears to them as a group. Upon this, the first Christian community, he bestows his peace. There is no Christianity without community, just as there is no peace without fraternity. But as a community, where are we headed, where are we going to find peace? Let us look again at the disciples. Before Easter, they walked behind Jesus, but continued to think in human terms: they were hoping for a victorious Messiah who would vanquish his enemies, work wonders and miracles, and make them rich and famous. Yet those worldly desires left them empty-handed and robbed their community of peace, generating arguments and opposition (cf. Lk 9:46; 22:24). We face the same danger: to be with others, but to go our own way; in society, and even in the Church, we seek power, a career, our own ambitions… We go our own way instead of God’s, and we end up like the disciples: behind locked doors, without hope, and filled with fear and disappointment. Yet at Easter they once more find the path to peace, thanks to Jesus, who breathes on them and says: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22). Thanks to the Holy Spirit, they will no longer look at what divides them, but at what unites them. They will go out into the world no longer for themselves, but for others; not to gain attention, but to offer hope; not to earn approval, but to spend their lives joyfully for the Lord and for others.

Brothers and sisters, there is always the danger that we can follow the spirit of the world instead of the Spirit of Christ. How can we resist the lure of power and money and not give in to divisiveness, to the temptations of careerism that corrode the community, and to the false illusions of pleasure and witchcraft that make us become selfish and self-centred? Once more, through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord shows us the way. He tells us: “I dwell… with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Is 57:15). His way is to share with the poor: that is the best antidote against the temptations of divisiveness and worldliness. To have the courage to look to the poor and listen to them, because they are members of our community and not strangers to be kept far from our sight and our conscience. Let us open our hearts to others, instead of closing in upon our own problems or superficial concerns. Let us start from the poor and we will discover that we all share an interior poverty, that all of us need the Spirit of God to free us from the spirit of the world, and that humility is the grandeur and fraternity the true wealth of every Christian. Let us believe in community and, with God’s help, build a Church free of the worldly spirit and full of the Holy Spirit, unconcerned with hoarding riches and filled with brotherly love!

Finally, we come to the third source of peace: mission. Jesus says to his disciples: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21). He sends us, even as the Father sent him. Yet how did the Father send him into the world? He sent him to serve and to give his life for humanity (cf. Mk 10:45), to show his mercy to each person (cf. Lk 15) and to seek out those who are far away (cf. Mt 9:13). In a word, the Father sent him for everyone: not just for the righteous, but for everyone. In this regard, the words of Isaiah resound once more: “Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord,” (Is 57:19). First to the far, and then to the near: not only to “our own”, but to all.

Brothers and sisters, we are called to be missionaries of peace, and this will bring us peace. It is a decision we have to make. We need to find room in our hearts for everyone; to believe that ethnic, regional, social, religious and cultural differences are secondary and not obstacles; that others are our brothers and sisters, members of the same human community; and that the peace brought into the world by Jesus is meant for everyone. We need to believe that we Christians are called to cooperate with everyone, to break the cycle of violence, to dismantle the machinations of hatred. Yes, Christians, sent by Christ, are called by definition to be a conscience of peace in our world. Not merely critical consciences, but primarily witnesses of love. Not concerned with their own rights, but with those of the Gospel, which are fraternity, love and forgiveness. Not concerned with their own affairs, but missionaries of the “mad love” of God for each human being.

Peace be with you, Jesus says today to every family, community, ethnic group, neighbourhood and city in this great country. Peace be with you! May these words of our Lord resound in the silence of our hearts. Let us hear them addressed to us and let us choose to be witnesses of forgiveness, builders of community, people charged with a mission of peace in our world.

Moto azalí na matóyi ma koyóka [Let those who have ears hear]

R/ Ayoka [Listen]

Moto azalí na motéma mwa kondima [Let those who heartly consent]

R/Andima [Consent]

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