Pope at Regina Coeli: Jesus' love is invincible!
(Vatican Radio) At the Regina
Coeli on Sunday, Pope Francis spoke about the day’s Gospel, where Jesus
describes Himself as the Good Shepherd.
In his reflection, Pope
Francis said the words of Jesus – My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and
they follow Me – “help us to understand that no one can call himself a follower
of Jesus if he does not listen to his voice.
Listening to Jesus, the Pope
continued, does not mean hearing in a superficial way, but engaging with the
Lord’s words in order to come to a “generous following,” expressed in the words
“and they follow Me.” This listening, he continued, means listening with our
hearts, not just with our ears.
The image of the shepherd and
the sheep, the Pope said, “indicates the close relationship that Jesus wants to
establish with each one of us. He is our guide, our teacher, our friend, our
model, but above all He is our Saviour.” When Jesus goes on to say, “I give
them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one can take them out of
My hand,” the Pope said these words “communicate to us a sense of absolute
security and of immense tenderness. Our life is fully secure in the hands of
Jesus and the Father, which are one single thing: one unique love, a unique
mercy, revealed once for all in the sacrifice of the Cross.”
It is at the Eucharistic
table, Pope Francis said, that this mystery is renewed: “It is there that the
sheep are gathered to nourish themselves; it is there that they become one
thing, between themselves and with the Good Shepherd.”
The Holy Father reminded us
that nothing and no one can take us out of the hands of Jesus, “because no one
can overcome His love – the love of Jesus is invincible!” Although the devil –
the evil one, as the Pope called him – attempts to take eternal life from us,
he can do nothing if we do not “open to him the doors of our hearts, following
his deceitful enticements.”
As usual, the Pope concluded
his reflection by turning to Mary, the Mother of God, “who listened to and
docilely followed the voice of the Good Shepherd.” He prayed, “May she help us
to welcome with joy the invitation of Jesus to become His disciples, and to
live always in the certainty of being in the paternal hands of the Father.”
You can find the full text
of the Pope's address here.
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