Pope Francis meets with Mexican Families
On Monday
evening Pope Francis flew to the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of
the Mexican southeast state of Chiapas, where he met with families in the
city’s stadium (the stadium of Tuxtla Gutierrez). Before addressing the
gathering, he listened to testimonies by people from different family
situations who included a civilly married couple of divorced parents who are
actively involved with charitable work, a disabled adolescent who found joy in
being accepted by the church and is now active in the evangelization of other youth,
a single mother who was rejected by society but welcomed with love in the
Church, and a catholic family of the diocese of Tapachula.
In his prepared
remarks, Pope Francis noted that the testimonies he had heard represented the
joys, hopes and determination by which many families confront sadness,
disillusion and failings. He observed that “living in a family is not always
easy, and can often be painful and stressful”. He added that he would prefer a
wounded family that makes daily efforts to put love into play to a society that
is afraid of love.
Before
travelling to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the Pope visited the cathedral of San Cristóbal
where he offered flowers to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a gift of
a chalice and a Chasuble to the cathedral. Inside the Church, he was welcomed
by groups of the elderly and the sick. Before reciting the Marian prayer with
them he told them that they help Jesus to carry his cross, by taking a piece of
it. He prayed to God through the intercession of Our Lady to give them strength
and peace of heart and to comfort them.
Here below
is the Pope’s full speech in English to the Families in the stadium of
Tuxtla Gutierrez.
Dear brothers
and sisters,
I am grateful to be here, on Chiapaneca soil. It feels good to be here on
this soil, on this land; it is good to be here in this place which, with you
here, has a family flavour, a home flavour. I give thanks to God for your
faces and your presence; I give thanks to God because of the heart-beat of his
presence in your families. I also thank you, families and friends, for
giving us your witness, for opening to us the doors of your homes and your
lives; you have allowed us to sit with you sharing both in the bread that
nourishes you and in the sweat of your brow as you face the difficulties of
every day. It is the bread representing the joys, the hopes and the hard
sweat with which you confront sadness, disillusion and failings. I thank
you for allowing me to enter into your families, your homes, and to sit at your
tables.
Manuel, I thank you for your witness and especially for your example. I
liked the expression you used “to put your heart into it” [echarle ganas]
describing the attitude you took after speaking with your parents. You
began to put your heart into your life, your family, your friends; you put your
heart into us gathered here. I believe that this is what the Holy Spirit
always wants to do in our midst: to put a new heart into us, giving us reasons
to keep on taking risks, dreaming and building a life that has this sense of
home, of family.
This is something which God the Father has always dreamt of and for which he
has fought for a very long time. When everything seemed lost that
afternoon in the Garden of Eden, God the Father put a new heart into that young
couple and told them that everything was not lost. When the people of
Israel felt that they could not go on journeying through the desert, God the
Father put his heart into it by giving them manna from heaven. When the
fullness of time came, God the Father put his heart into it by giving humanity
the eternal gift of his Son.
Similarly, all of us here have had this experience, in different moments and
different ways; God the Father has put his heart into it for us. We can
ask ourselves: why? Because he cannot do otherwise. He knows how to
put his best into us; why? Because his name is love, his name is gift,
his name is self-giving, his name is mercy. This he has shown us with
complete power and clarity in Jesus, his Son, who risked everything to the end
so as to once again make possible the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom that
invites us to share in a new mindset, that puts into motion a dynamic power
capable of opening the heavens, capable of opening our hearts, our minds, our
hands and capable of challenging us with new possibilities. This is a
Kingdom which has the feeling of family, the flavour of a life shared. In
Jesus and with Jesus this Kingdom is possible. He is capable of changing
our perspectives, attitudes, and feelings, which are often watery and dull,
into the wine of joy and celebration. He can heal our hearts and invite
us again and again, seventy times seven, to begin anew. He can make all
things new.
Manuel, you asked me to pray for the many adolescents who are disillusioned and
on a wrong path, many who are deflated, tired and without aspirations.
And as you yourself rightly said, this attitude often comes from a feeling of
loneliness, from not having someone to talk to. And this reminds me of
the witness which Beatrice gave us. If I am not mistaken Beatrice, you
said: “the struggle has always been difficult because of uncertainty and
loneliness”. Uncertainty, insufficiency, and often not having the bare
essentials, can lead to despair, can make us deeply anxious because we cannot
see a way forward, especially when we have children in our care.
Uncertainty is not only a threat to our stomach (which is already serious), but
it can also threaten our soul, demoralizing us and taking away our energy so
that we seek apparent solutions that in the end solve nothing. There is a
kind of uncertainty which can be very dangerous, which can creep in
surreptitiously; it is the uncertainty born of solitude and isolation.
And isolation is always a bad counsellor.
Both, unknowingly, used the same expression; both showed us that very often the
greatest temptation we face is to cut ourselves off, and far from putting our
heart into things, this attitude of isolation ends up, like a moth, drying up
our souls.
The way to overcome the uncertainty and isolation which makes us vulnerable to
so many apparent solutions, can be found on different levels. One is
through legislation which protects and guarantees the bare necessities of life
so that every home and every person can develop through education and dignified
employment. There is, on the other hand, what the witness of Humberto and
Claudia made evident when they explained how they tried to convey to others the
love of God that they experienced through service and generous giving.
Laws and personal commitment make good duo that can break the spiral of
uncertainty.
Today we see how on different fronts the family is weakened and
questioned. It is regarded as a model which has done its time, but which
has no place in our societies; these, claiming to be modern, increasingly
favour a model based on isolation.
It is true that living in family is not always easy, and can often be painful
and stressful but, as I have often said referring to the Church, I prefer a
wounded family that makes daily efforts to put love into play, to a society
that is sick from isolationism and habitual afraid of love. I prefer a
family that makes repeated efforts to begin again, to a society that is
narcissistic and obsessed with luxury and comfort. I prefer a family with
tired faces from generous giving, to faces with makeup that know nothing of
tenderness and compassion.
I have been asked to pray for you and I want to do so now, with you. You
Mexicans have something extra; you run ahead with an advantage. You have
a Mother, la Guadalupana. She wanted to visit this land and this gives us
the certainty of her intercession so that our dream, which we call the family,
may not be lost through uncertainty or solitude. She is always ready to
defend our families, our future; she is always ready to put her heart into it
by giving us her Son. For this reason, I invite you to join our hands and
say together: “Hail Mary…”.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét