Pope Francis: Beatitudes born
from compassionate heart of Jesus
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Pope Francis delivered the first homily during his Apostolic
Visit to Chile at Mass celebrated in Santiago’s O’Higgins Park.
The Gospel for the votive Mass for Peace and Justice introduces
Christ’s Sermon on the Mount with the words, “When Jesus saw
the crowds…” The Holy Father took these words as the starting point for his own
homily. God’s profound love, he said, is awakened not by “ideas or concepts,
but by faces, persons.”
Encounter with the People
It is this encounter with the people, the Pope said, that
led to the proclamation of the Beatitudes “that horizon towards which we are
called and challenged to set out.” He said the Beatitudes are not “the fruit of
passivity in the face of reality, nor of a mere onlooker gathering grim
statistics” but are rather “born of the compassionate heart of Jesus, which
encounters the hearts of men and women seeking and yearning for a life of
happiness.”
The Pope said Chileans know what it means to yearn for
happiness, know what it means to suffer and fall, but also to get up again
“after so many falls.”
Beatitudes born of a merciful heart
The Beatitudes, he continued, “are not the fruit of a
hypercritical attitude or the ‘cheap words’ of those who think they know it all
yet are unwilling to commit themselves to anything or anyone, and thus end up
preventing any chance of generating processes of change and reconstruction in
our communities and in our lives.” Rather, “the Beatitudes are born of a
merciful heart that never loses hope.”
Pope Francis said that Jesus comes “to cast out the inertia”
of those who “no longer have faith in the transforming power of God the Father,
and in their brothers and sisters.” With the Beatitudes, “Jesus tells us,
Blessed are you who work for reconciliation.” The Pope said the Beatitude
“Blessed are the peacemakers” asks us “to make ever greater room for the spirit
of reconciliation in our midst.”
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