Pope at Mass in Madagascar:
Following in Jesus’ footsteps is demanding
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| Pope Francis blesses a statue of Mary at Mass in Antananarivo |
Pope Francis celebrates Holy Mass before one million people
in the Diocesan Grounds of Soamandrakizay, in the capital of Antananarivo. In
his homily, he focuses on the Gospel description of what Jesus’ asks of His
disciples in order fulfill God’s plan.
By Vatican News
Saint Luke’s Gospel this Sunday describes how “great
multitudes accompanied Jesus”. As if to illustrate that Gospel, a great
multitude of nearly one million people gathered in Antananarivo on Sunday
morning to attend the Mass celebrated by Pope Francis.
Catholics make up 35% of Madagascar’s population of 26
million people.
Following Jesus is not easy
The Pope began his homily by acknowledging how “you too have
come in great numbers to receive Jesus’ message and follow in His footsteps.
But you also know that following Jesus is not easy”. Today’s Gospel, he added,
“reminds us of how demanding that commitment can be”.
Jesus’ first demand
“Jesus’ first demand has to do with family relationships”,
said the Pope. When “family” becomes the decisive criterion for what we
consider right and good”, he continued, “we end up justifying and even
‘consecrating’ practices that lead to the culture of privilege and exclusion:
favouritism, patronage and, as a consequence, corruption”.
Jesus says clearly that “anyone incapable of seeing others
as brothers or sisters, of showing sensitivity to their lives and situations
regardless of their family, cultural or social background ‘cannot be my
disciple’”.
Jesus’ second demand
Pope Francis went on to explain Jesus’ second demand. He
tells us not to identify the Kingdom of Heaven “with our personal agenda, or
our attachment to an ideology that would abuse the name of God or of religion
to justify acts of violence, segregation and even murder, exile, terrorism and
marginalization”.
This demand encourages us “not to dilute and narrow the
Gospel message, but instead to build history in fraternity and solidarity”,
continued Pope Francis, “in complete respect for the earth and its gifts, as
opposed to any form of exploitation”.
Jesus’ third demand
Jesus’ third demand, said the Pope, “is that we rediscover
how to be grateful and to realize that, much more than a personal triumph, our
life and our talents are the fruit of a gift. This gift is created by God
through the silent interplay of so many people whose names we will only know in
the Kingdom of Heaven”.
With these three demands, said Pope Francis, the Lord wants
to free His disciples “from the grave obstacle that, in the end, is one of the
worst forms of enslavement: living only for oneself”.
Making room for God
With these demands, continued the Pope, the Lord asks us “to
adjust our priorities” and “to make room for God to be the centre and axis of
our life”. It is not part of God’s plan for men and women, young people and
children to suffer, he said. This is why Jesus urgently calls us “to die to our
self-centredness, our individualism and our pride”.
“We Christians cannot stand with arms folded in
indifference, or with arms outstretched in helplessness”, he added. “As
believers, we must stretch out our hands, as Jesus does with us”.
Making God’s plans our own
“The demands that Jesus sets before us cease to be burdensome
as soon as we begin to taste the joy of the new life that He Himself sets
before us”, said the Pope, because “Jesus is the first to seek us at the
crossroads, even when we are lost like the sheep or the prodigal son”.
Pope Francis concluded his homily at the Mass in
Antananarivo with a prayer that “this humble realism may inspire us to take on
great challenges and give you the desire to make your beautiful country a place
where the Gospel becomes life. Let us commit ourselves”, he said, “and let us
make the Lord’s plans our own”.
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