Pope at Mass: We have a Father,
we are not orphans
Pope Francis celebrated the last Mass broadcast live from
the Casa Santa Marta chapel on Sunday praying for trash collectors and
reminding us that we are not orphans because we have a Father in heaven.
By Sr Bernadette Mary Reis, fsp
“Today our prayer is for all those persons who clean
hospitals, the streets, who empty dumpsters, who go to each house to remove
trash”. This was Pope Francis’s intention for the Mass he celebrated for the
Sixth Sunday of Easter in the chapel of Casa Santa Marta. He continued saying,
“It’s a work that no one sees, but it is a job that is necessary to survive.
May the Lord bless them and help them”.
He then reflected on the Sunday’s Gospel passage (John
14:15-21) and the Second Reading (1 Peter 3:15-18) during his homily.
Jesus bids farewell with a promise
Pope Francis began his homily saying that as Jesus bade
farewell to His disciples, He left them hope. That hope was the promise that He
would not leave them orphans. It is this sense of being orphaned, of not having
a Father, that is, and has been, the root of many problems on earth, he said.
“We live in a society that lacks the Father. A sense of
being orphaned touches one’s sense of belonging and fraternity”.
Fulfillment of the promise
The fulfillment of this promise is the Holy Spirit. “The
Holy Spirit does not come to ‘make us His clients’”, the Pope said. Instead,
the Holy Spirit comes “to show us how to access the Father, to teach us the way
to the Father, the way that Jesus opened, the way that Jesus showed us.”
Trinitarian spirituality
A spirituality directed only to the Son of God does not
exist, the Pope continued. “The Father is at the centre”, he reminded us. “The
Son was sent by the Father and returns to the Father. The Holy Spirit is sent
by the Father to remind us and teach us how to access the Father”.
Sense of belonging
This “awareness that we are children” and not “orphans” is
the key to living in peace, Pope Francis explained. Wars, both big and small,
“always contain a dimension of being orphans because the Father who makes peace
is missing”.
Attitudes of those belong to a family
Our mission as Christians is to accomplish what St Peter
exhorts in the Second Reading. We are to bear witness to the hope that we have
when others ask us for an explanation. “Do it with gentleness and respect”,
Peter directed, “keeping your conscience clear”. Gentleness and respect are
ways of behaving characteristic of those who share a relationship with a common
father, the Pope explained. “They are attitudes of belonging, belonging to one
family who is certain of having a Father” who is at the centre, who is
everyone’s origin, the source of all unity and salvation. And He sent the Holy
Spirit to “remind us” of how to access the Father, to teach us these familial
attitudes of gentleness, meekness and peace, the Pope said.
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
At the conclusion of his homily the Pope prayed, “Let us ask
the Holy Spirit to remind us always, always, how to access the Father, to
remind us that we have a Father. And to this civilization that has a huge sense
of being orphaned, may He grant the grace of finding the Father once again, the
Father who provides everyone with a sense of meaning in life. May He make all
men and women one family."
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