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Saturday, November 19, 2016
JUBILEE AUDIENCE POPE FRANCIS
St Peter's Square
Saturday, 12 November 2016

EXTRAORDINARY JUBILEE OF MERCY

PHOTO: L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO

Mercy and inclusion

Dear brothers and sisters, Good morning!
In this last Saturday Jubilee Audience, I would like to present an important aspect of mercy: inclusion. Indeed, God, in his design of love, does not want to exclude anyone, but wants to include everyone. For example, through Baptism, he makes us his children in Christ, members of his Body which is the Church. And we Christians are invited to use the same criteria: mercy is the way one acts, that style, with which we try to include others in our lives, and avoid closing in on ourselves and our selfish securities.

In the passage from the Gospel of Matthew that we have just heard, Jesus addresses a truly universal invitation: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (11:28). No one is excluded from this call, because Jesus’ mission is to reveal the Father’s love to everyone. Our task is to open our hearts, to trust in Jesus and accept this message of love, which makes us enter into the mystery of salvation.

This aspect of mercy, inclusion, is manifested in opening one’s arms wide to welcome, without excluding; without labeling others according to their social status, language, race, culture or religion: there is, before us, only a person to be loved as God loves them. The person whom I find at my work, in my neighbourhood, is a person to love, as God loves. “But he is from that country, or that other country, or of this religion, or another... He is a person whom God loves and I have to love him”. This is to include, and this is inclusion.

We encounter so many weary and oppressed people today! In the street, in public offices, in medical practices... Jesus’ gaze rests on each one of those faces, even through our eyes. And how is our heart? Is it merciful? And our way of thinking and acting, is it inclusive? The Gospel calls us to recognize, in the history of humanity, the design of a great work of inclusion, which fully respects the freedom of every person, every community, every nation, and calls everyone to form a family of brothers and sisters, in justice, solidarity and peace, and to be part of the Church, which is the Body of Christ.

How true are Jesus’ words, which invite those who are tired and weary to come to Him to find rest! His arms outstretched on the cross show that no one is excluded from his love and his mercy, not even the greatest sinner: no one! We are all included in his love and in his mercy. The most immediate expression with which we feel welcomed and included in him is that of forgiveness. We all need to be forgiven by God. And we all need to encounter brothers and sisters who help us to go to Jesus, to open ourselves to the gift he has given us on the cross. Let us not hinder each other! Let us not exclude anyone! Rather, with humility and simplicity let us become instruments of the Father’s inclusive mercy. The inclusive mercy of the Father: it is like this. The Holy Mother Church prolongs in the world the great embrace of Christ who died and rose. Also this Square, with its colonnade, expresses this embrace. Let us engage in this movement of including others, to be witnesses of the mercy with which God has accepted and welcomed each one of us.

Special greetings:
I greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, particularly those from Ireland and Pakistan. With prayerful good wishes that the present 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.

Dear brothers and sisters, live this last Saturday Audience of the Jubilee with faith, in order to experience forgiveness, mercy and the love of God in your life. I greet with particular affection you volunteers of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. You have been great! You all have come from different countries, and I thank you for the valuable service you have provided so that pilgrims could live this experience of faith well. Over the course of these months, I have noticed your discreet presence in the Square with the Jubilee logo and have admired the dedication, patience and enthusiasm with which you have carried out your work. Thank you very much!

In particular, I extend a greeting to young people, the sick and newlyweds. Yesterday we commemorated Saint Martin of Tours, the patron saint of beggars, whose 17th centenary of the birth we celebrate this year. May his example inspire in you, dear young people, especially you Erasmus students in Europe, the desire to perform acts of solidarity; may his faith in Christ the Lord sustain you, dear sick people, in the trials of disease; and may his moral rectitude remind you, dear newlyweds, of the importance of values in the education of children.


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Wednesday, November 16, 2016
GENERAL AUDIENCE POPE FRANCIS
Saint Peter's Square
Wednesday, 9 November 2016

PHOTO: L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO

35. To visit the sick and the imprisoned

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Good morning!
Jesus’ life, especially during the three years of his public ministry, was a continual encounter with people. Among them, the sick had a special place. How many pages of the Gospel tell of these encounters! The paralytic, the blind man, the leper, the possessed man, the epileptic, and the countless people suffering from illnesses of every kind.... Jesus made himself close to each of them, and cured them with his presence and his healing power. Therefore, among the works of mercy, we cannot fail to visit and assist those who are sick.

Together with this, we can also include being close to those who are in prison. Indeed, both the sick and the imprisoned live in conditions which limit their freedom. It is precisely when we lack [freedom] that we realize how precious it is! Jesus has given us the possibility of being free regardless of the limitations of illness and of restrictions. And he offers us the freedom which comes from an encounter with him, and the new sense which this brings to our personal conditions.

With this work of mercy, the Lord invites us to make an act of great humanity: sharing . Let us remember this word: sharing. Those who are sick often feel alone. We cannot hide the fact that, especially in our days, in sickness one experiences greater loneliness than at other times in life. A visit can make a person who is sick feel less alone, and a little companionship is great medicine! A smile, a caress, a handshake are simple gestures, but they are very important for those who feel abandoned. How many people dedicate themselves to visiting the sick in hospitals or in their homes! It is a priceless voluntary work. When it is done in the Lord’s name, moreover, it also becomes an eloquent and effective expression of mercy . Let us not leave the sick alone! Let us not prevent them from finding consolation, or ourselves from being enriched by our closeness to those who suffer. Hospitals are true “cathedrals of suffering” where, however, the power of supportive and compassionate charity is also made evident.

In the same way, I think of those who are locked up in prison. Jesus has not forgotten them either. By including the act of visiting of those in prison among the works of mercy, he wanted first and foremost to invite us to judge no one. Of course, if someone is in prison it is because he has done wrong, and did not respect the law or civil harmony. Therefore, in prison, he is serving his sentence. However, whatever a detainee may have done, he remains always beloved by God. Who is able to enter the depths of [an inmate’s] conscience to understand what he is experiencing? Who can understand his suffering and remorse? It is too easy to wash our hands, declaring that he has done wrong. A Christian is called, above all, to assume responsibility, so that whoever has done wrong understands the evil he has carried out, and returns to his senses. The absence of freedom is, without a doubt, one of the hardest pills for a human being to swallow. Add this to degradation arising from the conditions which are often devoid of humanity in which these persons live, it is then truly the case in which a Christian is motivated to do everything to restore his dignity.

Visiting people in prison is a work of mercy which, especially today, takes on a particular value due to the various forms of “justicialism” to which we are exposed. Therefore, let no one point a finger at another. Instead, let us all be instruments of mercy, and have attitudes of sharing and respect. I often think about detainees... I think of them often, I carry them in my heart. I wonder what led them to delinquency, and how they managed to succumb to various forms of evil. Yet, along with these thoughts, I feel that they all need closeness and tenderness, because God’s mercy works wonders. How many tears I have seen shed on the cheeks of prisoners who had perhaps never wept before in their lives; and this is only because they feel welcomed and loved.

And let us not forget that even Jesus and his Apostles experienced imprisonment. In the account of the Passion, we know of the suffering which the Lord endured: captured, dragged about like a criminal, derided, scourged, crowned with thorns.... He, the sole Innocent! And even Saint Peter and Saint Paul were in prison (cf. Acts 12:5; Phil 1:12-17). Last Sunday afternoon — which was the Sunday of the Jubilee for Prisoners — a group of detainees from Padua came to visit me. I asked them what they were going to do the following day, before returning to Padua. They told me: “We will go to the Mamertine prison to share the experience of Saint Paul”. It was beautiful; hearing this did me good. These detainees wanted to find the imprisoned Paul. It was a beautiful thing, and it did me good. And even there, in prison, [Saints Peter and Paul] prayed and evangelized. The page from the Acts of the Apostles, which recounts Paul’s imprisonment, is moving: he felt alone, and wished that some of his friends would pay him a visit (cf. 2 Tim 4:9-15). He felt alone because the vast majority had left him alone... the great Paul.

These works of mercy, as you can see, are age-old, yet ever timely. Jesus left what he was doing to go and visit Peter’s mother-in-law; an age-old work of charity. Jesus did it.

Let us not fall into indifference, but become instruments of God’s mercy. All of us can be instruments of God’s mercy, and this will do more good to us than to others because mercy passes through a gesture, a word, a visit, and this mercy is an act of restoring the joy and dignity which has been lost.

Special greetings:
I greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, particularly those from England, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, Canada and the United States of America. With prayerful good wishes that the present 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.

May the passage through the Holy Door remind each of you that only through Christ is it possible to enter into the love and mercy of the Father, who welcomes and forgives everyone.

I extend a particular greeting to young people, to the sick, and to newlyweds. Today, we celebrate the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the Cathedral of Rome. Pray for the Successor of the Apostle Peter, dear young people, in order that he may always confirm his brothers and sisters in the faith; may you feel the closeness of the Pope in prayer, dear sick people, in order to confront the trials of illness; may you teach your children the faith with simplicity, dear newlyweds, nourishing it with love for the Church and her shepherds.


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Sunday, November 13, 2016
ANGELUS POPE FRANCIS
Saint Peter's Square
Sunday, 6 November 2016


PHOTO: ANSA-en.radiovaticana.va

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Good morning!
Within just days of the Solemnity of All Saints and of the Commemoration of the faithful departed, this Sunday’s Liturgy invites us once again to reflect upon the mystery of the resurrection of the dead. The Gospel (cf. Lk 20:27-38) presents Jesus confronted by several Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection and considered the relationship with God only in the dimension of earthly life. Therefore, in order to place the resurrection under ridicule and to create difficulty for Jesus, they submit a paradoxical and absurd case: that of a woman who’d had seven husbands, all brothers, who died one after the other. Thus came the malicious question posed to Jesus: in the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be (v. 33)?

Jesus does not fall into the snare and emphasizes the truth of the resurrection, explaining that life after death will be different from that on earth. He makes his interlocutors understand that it is not possible to apply the categories of this world to the realities that transcend and surpass what we see in this life. He says, in fact: “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage” (vv. 34-35).

With these words, Jesus means to explain that in this world we live a provisional reality, which ends; conversely, in the afterlife, after the resurrection, we will no longer have death as the horizon and will experience all things, even human bonds, in the dimension of God, in a transfigured way. Even marriage, a sign and instrument of God in this world, will shine brightly, transformed in the full light of the glorious communion of saints in Paradise.

The “sons of heaven and of the resurrection” are not a few privileged ones, but are all men and all women, because the salvation that Jesus brings is for each one of us. And the life of the risen shall be equal to that of angels (cf. v. 36), meaning wholly immersed in the light of God, completely devoted to his praise, in an eternity filled with joy and peace. But pay heed! Resurrection is not only the fact of rising after death, but is a new genre of life which we already experience now; it is the victory over nothing that we can already anticipate.

Resurrection is the foundation of the faith and of Christian hope. Were there no reference to Paradise and to eternal life, Christianity would be reduced to ethics, to a philosophy of life. Instead, the message of Christian faith comes from heaven, it is revealed by God and goes beyond this world. Belief in resurrection is essential in order that our every act of Christian love not be ephemeral and an end in itself, but may become a seed destined to blossom in the garden of God, and to produce the fruit of eternal life.

May the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, confirm us in the hope of resurrection and help us to make fruitful in good works her Son’s word sown in our hearts.


After the Angelus:
Dear brothers and sisters, on the occasion of today’s Jubilee for Prisoners, I would like to address an appeal in favour of improving the living conditions in prisons throughout the world, that the human dignity of detainees be fully respected. In addition, I would like to emphasize the importance of reflecting on the need for a criminal justice system that is not exclusively punitive, but open to hope and the prospect of reintegrating the offender into society. In a special way, I submit for the consideration of the competent civil authorities of every country the possibility that, in this Holy Year of Mercy, an act of clemency be carried out for those prisoners who are held to be eligible to benefit from such a provision.

Two days ago the Paris Agreement on the world climate was ratified. This important step forward shows that humanity has the capacity to collaborate for the protection of creation (cf. Laudato Si’, n. 13), in order to place the economy at the service of people and to build peace and justice. Then tomorrow, in Marrakech, Morocco, the new session of the Climate Change Conference will begin, aimed among other things at the implementation of the Agreement. I hope that this whole process may be guided by the awareness of our responsibility for the care of our common home.

Yesterday in Scutari, Albania, 30 martyrs were proclaimed Blessed: two bishops, many priests and religious, a seminarian and several lay people, victims of the terribly harsh persecution by the atheist regime that long controlled that country in the last century. They preferred to submit to prison, torture and finally death, in order to remain faithful to Christ and to the Church. May their example help us to find in the Lord strength that supports in moments of difficulty and that inspires attitudes of goodness, forgiveness and peace.

© Copyright - Libreria Editrice Vaticana


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