Pope at Mass: “Prayer must begin
with humility”
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| Pope Francis at Mass at Casa Santa Marta, Saturday, 21 March 2020 (ANSA) |
Pope Francis offers Mass on Saturday morning at the Casa
Santa Marta for families, praying “that they might find a way of communicating
and building loving relationships”. (Playback of live broadcast included)
By Vatican News
“Today, I would like to remember families who cannot leave
their homes,” Pope Francis said at the beginning of the Saturday morning
liturgy at the Casa Santa Marta chapel.
“Perhaps the farthest they can go is their balcony. …May
they know how to find a way of communicating well, of building loving
relationships within the family. And that they might know how to conquer the
anguish of this moment together in the family. We pray for peace in families
today during this crisis, and for creativity.”
During his homily, the Pope focused on the two different
styles of approaching God presented in the day’s Gospel (Luke 18:9-14).
Coming to the Lord
“When that ‘return home’ ” from yesterday’s reading “touches
the heart, the response is ‘Let’s return to the Lord’,” the
Pope said at the beginning of his homily. “Come, let us return to the Lord…He
has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us; He has struck us down, but He will
bandage our wounds…. Let us set ourselves to know the Lord; that He will come
is as certain as the dawn…”, he quoted from the First Reading (Hosea 6:1-6).
“With this hope the people begin their journey to return
to the Lord. One of the ways to find the Lord is through prayer. We pray to the
Lord. We return to Him.”
Presumption vs. humility
The Pope then contrasted two styles of approaching the Lord.
He provided three examples from the Gospels: the elder son and the prodigal
son, the rich man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the tax collector from the
day’s Gospel.
The Pharisee in the Gospel is the epitome of the
presumptuous style.
“He goes to pray, but in order to say how good he is — as
if to say to the Lord, ‘See how good I am! If you need anything, let me know
and I'll take care of your problem’. This is how he interacted with God: presumptuously.
Perhaps he did everything the law said to do: ‘I fast twice a week. I pay
tithes on all I have.' I’m good! …When we go to the Lord too confident in
ourselves we will fall into presumption…like the elder son, or the rich man who
didn’t need anything.”
The other style, modeled by the tax collector in the day’s
Gospel, shows us the right way to approach God, the Pope said. He doesn’t
approach the altar but remains at a distance, not even daring to raise his eyes
to heaven. Beating his breast, the tax collector says, “Be merciful to me a
sinner”.
"In this way, the Lord teaches us how to pray, how
to draw near…to the Lord – humbly… Praying with our "souls exposed",
without make-up or dressing ourselves up with our own virtue. As we read at the
beginning of Mass, He forgives all our sins. But He needs me to show them to
Him… I pray face to face with soul exposed…. The way is to lower ourselves. The
path is our reality. The only man here in this parable who understood his
reality was the tax collector. ‘You are God and I'm a sinner. That's the
reality.’ But I say that I'm a sinner not with my mouth but with my heart.”
The Pope’s Prayer
“May the Lord teach us to understand this attitude in order
to begin praying”, the Pope concluded his homily.
“When we begin praying with our own justifications, with
our securities, that's not prayer. That's like speaking to a mirror. Instead,
when we begin praying with our true reality – I'm a sinner – this is a good
step forward in allowing the Lord to look at us. May Jesus teach us this.”
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