GENERAL AUDIENCE POPE FRANCIS
Saint
Peter's Square
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
5. God hears our cry and makes a covenant
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Good morning!
In Sacred Scripture, God’s mercy is present throughout
the entire history of the people of Israel.
With his mercy, the Lord accompanies the journey of
the Patriarchs, gives them children despite being barren, leads them on paths
of grace and reconciliation, as demonstrated by the story of Joseph and his
brothers (cf. Gen ch. 37-50). I think of the many brothers and sisters in a
family who are distant and do not speak to each other. This Year of Mercy is a good opportunity to
meet again, embrace, forgive and forget the bad things. But as we know, in
Egypt, life is hard for the people. It is precisely when the Israelites are
about to give in to resignation, that the Lord intervenes and works salvation.
One reads in the Book of Exodus: “In the course of
those many days the King of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned under
their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to
God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with
Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel, and God
knew their condition” (2:23-25). Mercy cannot remain indifferent to the
suffering of the oppressed, to the cry of those who are subjected to violence,
reduced to slavery, condemned to death. It is a painful reality that afflicts
every era, including ours, and which often makes us feel powerless, tempted to
harden our heart and think of something else. However, God “is not indifferent”
(Message for the Celebration of the 2016 World Day of
Peace, n. 1). He does not look away from our human pain. The God
of mercy responds and takes care of the poor, of those who cry out in
desperation. God listens and intervenes in order to save, raising men able to
hear the groan of suffering and to work in favour of the oppressed.
And so begins the story of Moses as the mediator of
freedom for the people. He confronts the Pharaoh to convince him to let the
Israelites depart; and he then leads the people, across the Red Sea and the
desert, toward freedom. Moses — whom just after his birth, divine mercy saved
from death in the waters of the Nile — becomes the mediator of that very mercy,
allowing the people to be born to freedom, saved from the waters of the Red
Sea. In this Year of Mercy we too can do this work of acting as mediators of
mercy through the works of mercy in order to approach, to give relief, to
create unity. So many good things can be done.
God’s mercy always operates to save. It is quite the
opposite of the work of those who always act to kill: for example, those who
wage war. The Lord, through his servant Moses, guides Israel in the desert as
if Israel were a son, educates the people to the faith and makes a covenant
with Israel, creating a bond of the strongest love, like that of a father with
his child and of a groom with his bride.
Divine mercy goes that far. God offers a special,
exclusive, privileged relationship of love. When he gives instructions to Moses
regarding the covenant, he says: “if you will obey my voice and keep my
covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth
is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex
19:5-6).
Of course, God already possesses all the earth because
he created it; but his people become for him a different, special possession:
his personal “reserve of gold and silver” such as King David stated he had
given for the construction of the Temple.
So we become thus for God, by accepting his covenant
and letting ourselves be saved by him. The Lord’s mercy renders man precious,
like a personal treasure that belongs to him, which he safeguards and with
which he is well pleased.
These are the wonders of divine mercy, which reaches
complete fulfillment in the Lord Jesus, in the “new and eternal covenant”
consummated in his blood, which annuls our sin with forgiveness and renders us
definitively Children of God (cf. 1 Jn 3:1), precious gems in the hands of the
good and merciful Father. And as we are Children of God and have the
opportunity to receive this legacy — that of goodness and mercy — in comparison
to others, let us ask the Lord that in this Year of Mercy we too may do
merciful things; let us open our heart in order to reach everyone with the
works of mercy, to work the merciful legacy that God the Father showed toward
us.
Special greetings:
I address a warm welcome to Italian-speaking pilgrims.
I greet the circus artists and workers and I thank them for their fine
performance; you are champions of beauty and beauty is good for the soul.
Beauty brings us closer to God, but behind this spectacle of beauty there are
so many hours of training!
I greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors
taking part in today’s Audience, especially those from the United States of
America. With prayerful good wishes that the current Jubilee of Mercy will be a
moment of grace and spiritual renewal for you and your families, I invoke upon
all of you joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. God bless you all!
May the Extraordinary Jubilee, with the passage
through the Holy Door, invite us to emerge from selfishness — we all have some
amount of selfishness. We must emerge from this. We must emerge from selfishness
and foster in each person the exercise of the works of mercy toward our
brothers and sisters.
A special thought goes to young people, the
sick and to newlyweds: Tomorrow is the liturgical memorial
of St Thomas Aquinas, Patron Saint of Catholic Schools. May his example impel
you, dear young people, to see in the merciful Jesus the one
teacher of life; may his intercession obtain for you, dear sick people,
the serenity and peace present in the mystery of the Cross; and may his
doctrine be an encouragement for you, dear newlyweds, to entrust
yourselves to the wisdom of heart in order to fulfil your mission.
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