Pope at Mass: ‘Cost of war weighs
on the weak’
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| Pope Francis celebrates Mass on Tuesday (Vatican Media) |
In his homily at Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Tuesday,
Pope Francis reflects on the cost of war, calling it a ‘modern-day flood’ whose
price is paid by the poorest among us.
By Vatican News
Pope Francis compared the Biblical flood of Noah’s time to
the many wars being waged in today’s world.
Reflecting on the day’s reading from Genesis
(6:5-8;7:1-5,10) in his homily, the Holy Father said there is a golden thread
running through the story of the flood and modern-day conflicts.
He said we must ask God for the grace to cry and lament when
faced with the world’s calamities and the victims of war, many of whom are
starving children, orphans, and the poor who pay the highest price.
God has feelings
Faced with these realities, Pope Francis invited us to have
a heart like God’s – capable of anger, pain, and closeness to others – one that
is both human and divine.
The Pope highlighted God’s suffering when He sees the evil
of men and women, and noted that God “regretted” having created people so much
that He decided to erase us from the face of the earth.
This is a God with feelings, said Pope Francis, “who is not
abstract” and who “suffers”, calling this “the mystery of the Lord”.
“[These are] the feelings of God, God the Father who
loves us – and love is a relationship. He is able to get angry and to feel
rage. It is Jesus who comes and gives us the path, with the suffering of the
heart, everything… But our God has feelings. Our God loves us with the heart;
He doesn’t love us with ideas but loves us with the heart. And when He caresses
us, He caresses us with His heart, and when He disciplines us, like a good
father, He disciplines us with His heart, suffering more than we do.”
Our times are no better than those of the flood
Pope Francis said our relationship with God is one “of heart
to heart, of son to Father who opens Himself, and if He is capable of feeling
pain in His heart, then we, too, will be able to feel pain before Him.” The
Pope said this is not sentimentalism, but the truth.
Our times, he said, are not so different from those of the
flood. There are problems and calamities, poor, hungry, persecuted, and
tortured people, “people who die in war because others throw bombs as if they
were candy”.
“I don’t think our times are better than those of the
flood; I don’t think so. Calamities are more or less the same; the victims are
more or less the same. Let’s think about the example of the weakest: children.
The many hungry children and children without education cannot grow in peace.
[Many are] without parents because they have been massacred in war… child
soldiers… Let us just think about those children.”
Cry as Jesus did
Pope Francis said we need to ask for the grace to have “a
heart like the heart of God – one made in the likeness of God” that feels pain
when witnessing others suffer.
“There is the great calamity of the flood; there is the
great calamity of today’s wars, where the price of the party is paid by the
weak, the poor, children, and those who have no resources to carry on. Let us
consider that the Lord is pained in His heart, and let us draw near to the Lord
and speak to Him, saying: ‘Lord, observe these things; I understand you.’ Let
us console the Lord: ‘I understand you, and I am with you. I accompany you in
prayer and intercede for all of these calamities which are the fruit of the
devil who wants to destroy the work of God.’”
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