Pope at Mass: “May the Lord help
us conquer our fear”
 |
| Pope Francis during adoration of the Blessed sacrament, Casa Santa Marta chapel, 26 March 2020 |
Pope Francis expresses his concern for all of us who are
coping with various fears and prays for them during Mass at the Casa Santa
Marta chapel on Thursday morning.
By Sr Bernadette M. Reis, fsp
“In these days there's so much suffering. There's a lot of
fear.” Pope Francis’ thus began the Sacred Liturgy which he offered in the
chapel of the Casa Santa Marta on Thursday morning. Then he went on:
“The fear of the elderly who are alone in nursing homes,
or hospitals, or in their own homes, and don't know what will happen. The fear
of those who don’t have regular jobs and are thinking about how to feed their
children. They foresee they may go hungry. The fear of many civil servants. At
this moment they're working to keep society functioning and they might get
sick. There’s also the fear, the fears, of each one of us. Each one knows what
their own fears are. We pray to the Lord that He might help us to trust, and to
tolerate and conquer these fears.”
During his homily, he reflected on how idolatry affects all
of our lives. He based his thoughts on the first reading from Exodus 32:7-14.
From the Living God to idols
Pope Francis explained how the chosen people turned into
idolaters. They lose patience waiting for Moses to return from the mountain.
They “get bored”, the Pope said. A “nostalgia for idolatry” overtakes them.
“It was a true apostasy. From the Living God to
idolatry….not knowing how to wait for the Living God. This nostalgia is an
illness, which is ours. We begin to walk enthusiastically toward freedom, but
then the complaining begins: ‘This is really difficult. It's a desert. I’m
thirsty. I want water. I want meat… In Egypt we ate good things. There's
nothing here’ ”.
Idolatry is selective
The Pope then described how idolatry is “selective”.
“It makes you think of the good things that it gives you. But it doesn't
allow you to see the bad things”, he said. The chosen people remembered all the
good things that were on their tables when they were in Egypt. “But they forgot
that it was the table of slavery”, Pope Francis pointed out.
Idolatry takes everything
Idolaters lose everything, the Pope continued. The chosen
people handed over all of their gold and silver to make the golden calf. They
constructed the golden calf with gifts God had given to them. It was He who had
to ask the Egyptians for their gold before they took flight.
“This mechanism also happens to us. When we do things
that lead us to idolatry, we become attached to things that distance us from
God. We make another god with the gifts that the Lord has given us: with our
intelligence, our will, our love, our heart. We use God’s very gifts to make
idols.”
Idols in our hearts
The crucifixes or images of Our Lady that we have in our
houses are not our idols. “They are in our hearts”, the Pope said. Each of us
should ask ourselves what idols we have hidden in our hearts. Idolatry can even
affect our prayer. After all, the chosen people wanted to worship the idol they
made. One way we do this is by changing “the celebration of a sacrament into a
secular celebration”, the Pope suggested.
The question today
“What are my idols?” “Where do I hide them?” These are the
questions to ask ourselves today, the Pope said, concluding his homily.
“May the Lord not find us at the end of our lives and say
to us: ‘You apostasised. You deviated from the way that I marked out. You
prostrated yourself before an idol’. We ask the Lord for the grace of
recognizing our own idols.”
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét