Pope Francis: make the most of each day
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the chapel
of the Casa Santa Marta on Thursday morning. In remarks to the faithful
following the readings of the day, the Holy Father reflected on the unique and
unrepeatable opportunities each day offers to grow in faith and love of
God.
The day in which we have received God's love
Pope Francis took as the focal point of his reflections the
text from Psalm 95, which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews took up in
the 3rd chapter, a portion of which was read at Mass. There is
“only one ‘today’, in our lives,” – only one real, concrete today. Our
temptation and everyone’s temptation is to say: “Yes, I will do tomorrow,”
though this is the temptation of a “‘tomorrow’ there will not be,” as Jesus
says in the parable of the ten virgins – the five foolish ones who had not
taken oil with them along with their lamps, then find the door locked when they
go to buy it. Francis also referred to the parable of the man who knocks on the
door saying to the Lord, “I ate with you, I was with you,” and hear him respond,
“I do not know you, you came late.”:
“I say this not to scare you, but simply to say that our
life is today: now or never. I think of this: tomorrow will be the eternal
tomorrow that never sets, with the Lord forever – if I am true to this day; and
the question that I put to you is the same the Holy Spirit is putting to all of
us, i.e. ‘How ought I to live, this day?”
Let our hearts be open to the Lord
The second word that is repeated in the Reading is “heart”.
For with the heart “we meet the Lord” and many times Jesus rebukes people
saying they are “slow of heart”, late to understand. The call is therefore not
to harden the heart and to wonder whether it is not “without faith” or
“deceived by sin”:
“‘Today’ is played out in our hearts. Are our hearts opened
to the Lord? To me it always strikes me when I find an older person – often
priests or nuns – who tell me, ‘Father, pray for my final perseverance’ – ‘But,
you did well all your life long, all the days of your ‘today’ are in the
service of the Lord, and still you are afraid?’ ‘No, no, my life has not yet
waned: I want to live it fully, I pray that the day arrives full, full, with a
heart strong in faith, and not ruined by sin, vices, corruption.’”
To ask about our day and our hearts
Pope Francis went on to urge the faithful present – and all
of us – to question ourselves about our own time and our own heart. Today is
“full of days” but “we will not repeat” any one of them. Days go by until the
Lord says “enough”:
“Today does not repeat itself: this is life. –and the
heart, the open heart, open to the Lord, not closed, not hard, not hardened,
not without faith, not perverted, not deceived by sin. The Lord has met so many
of these, who had closed their hearts: the doctors of the law, all these people
who persecuted him, put him to the test to convict him – and in the end they
managed to do it. We go home with these two words only: how is my ‘today’? The
sunset can be today, this day or many days later. But how are you, my today, in
the presence of the Lord? And how is my heart? Is it open? Is it firm in the
faith? is it led by the Lord? With these two questions we ask the Lord for the
grace which each of us needs.”
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