EXTRAORDINARY JUBILEE OF
MERCY
JUBILEE AUDIENCE POPE
FRANCIS
Saturday,
20 February 2016
Mercy and commitment
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Good morning!
The Jubilee of Mercy is a
true opportunity to enter deeply into the mystery of the goodness and love of
God. In this Season of Lent, the Church invites us to learn to know the Lord
Jesus ever better, and to live the faith in a consistent way with a lifestyle
that expresses the mercy of the Father. It is a commitment that we are called
to take on in order to offer to those we meet the concrete sign of God’s
closeness. My life, my attitude, the way of going through life, must really be
a concrete sign of the fact that God is close to us. Small gestures of love, of
tenderness, of care, that make people feel that the Lord is with us, is close
to us. This is how the door of mercy opens.
Today I would like to
pause briefly to reflect with you on the theme of this expression I used: the
theme of commitment. What is a commitment? What does it mean to be committed?
When I commit myself, it means that I assume a responsibility, a task, for
someone; it also means the way, the attitude of faithfulness and dedication, the
particular care with which I carry out this task. Each day we are asked to put
our heart and soul into what we do: prayer, work, study, but also in sport and
recreation.... Committing ourselves, in other words, means making every effort
to do our best in order to improve life.
God too has committed
himself to us. His first commitment was that of creating the world, and despite
our attempts to ruin it — and there are many — He is committed to keeping it
alive. But his greatest commitment was that of giving us Jesus. This is God’s
great commitment! Yes, Jesus is really the supreme commitment that God has
assumed for us. St Paul also recalled this when he wrote that God “did not
spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Rom 8:32). Accordingly, together
with Jesus, the Father will give us everything that we need.
How is God’s commitment to
us made manifest? It is very easy to verify it in the Gospel. In Jesus, God
completely committed himself in order to restore hope to the poor, to those who
were deprived of dignity, to strangers, to the sick, to captives, and to
sinners, whom he welcomed with kindness. In all this, Jesus was the living
expression of the Father’s mercy. I would like to touch upon this: Jesus
welcomed sinners with kindness. If we think in a human way, a sinner would be
an enemy of Jesus, an enemy of God, but he approached them with kindness, he
loved them and changed their hearts. We are all sinners: everyone! We all have
some fault before God, but we must not harbour doubt. He approaches us in order
to give us comfort, mercy, forgiveness. This is God’s commitment and this is
why he sent Jesus: to draw close to us, to all of us, and to open the door of
his love, of his heart, of his mercy. This is really beautiful. Very beautiful!
Starting with the merciful
love through which Jesus expressed God’s commitment, we too can and must
reciprocate his love with our commitment, and do so above all in serious
situations of need, where there is a greater thirst for hope. I think, for
example, of our commitment to forsaken people, to those who have severe
disabilities, to the most seriously ill, to the dying, to those who are unable
to express gratitude.... In all these situations we convey God’s mercy through
life-giving commitment, which witnesses to our faith in Christ. We must always
bring God’s tender caress — because God has caressed us with his mercy —
bringing it to others, to those who are in need, to those who have anguish in
their hearts or are sad: approach them with God’s caress, which is the same
that he gave to us.
May this Jubilee Year help
our mind and our heart to experience God’s commitment to each one of us and,
thanks to this, to transform life into a commitment of mercy for all.
Special greetings:
I greet the
English-speaking pilgrims present at today’s Audience, especially those from
Scotland, Norway and Latvia. With fervent wishes that the current Jubilee of
Mercy may be for you and for your families a time of grace and spiritual
renewal. I invoke upon all of you the joy and peace of the Lord Jesus. May God
bless you!
I address a special
thought to young people, to the sick and to newlyweds.
Monday, 22 February, will be the Feast of the Chair of the Apostle Peter, a
special day of communion of believers with the Successor of St Peter and with
the Holy See. This event, in this Holy Year, will be a Jubilee Day for the
Roman Curia, which works daily at the service of the Christian people. I exhort
you to continue to pray for my universal Ministry and I thank you for your
commitment to the daily building up of the ecclesial community.
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