Pope at Audience: true believers
intercede for the world
Pope Francis continues his cycle of catechesis on prayer at
the Wednesday General Audience, focusing on the biblical figure of Moses.
By Vatican News
Pope Francis began his General Audience on Wednesday by
noting that “God never liked to have anything to do with those who prayed the
'easy' way”. He used Moses as an example, explaining that from the very first
day of his vocation he was not a “weak” dialogue partner.
The Pope noted that when God called him, “Moses was in human
terms a ‘failure’”. He explained that the Book of Exodus depicts Moses as a
fugitive in the desert of Midian. Once a man who fought for the weak and
oppressed, “it was not justice” but “violence that came from his hands”, said
the Pope.
God to Moses
Then, the Pope recounted that in the same desert of Midian,
God invites Moses to take care of the people of Israel once more, but Moses
puts up a fuss. He does not believe he is worthy, said the Pope, adding that
“the word that appears most frequently on Moses’s lips, in every prayer he
addresses to God, is the question: ‘Why?’”
“With these fears, with this heart that often falters, Moses
appears human like us”, said the Pope. It is both his weakness and strength
that impress us. Entrusted by God to transmit the Law to his people, “he will
not, for this reason, cease to maintain close bonds of
solidarity with his people, especially in the hour of temptation and sin”. He
is remains on friendly terms with many people, said the Pope. “Despite his
privileged status, Moses never ceased to belong to the numbers of the poor in
spirit who live by trusting in God as the viaticum of their journey”.
Moses intercedes
The best way to describe how Moses prayed is the word "intercession”, said
the Pope. He explained that Moses’s faith in God is “completely at one with his
sense of fatherhood towards his people. Scripture habitually depicts him with
his hands outstretched towards God, as if to form a bridge between heaven and
earth with his own person”.
True believers, said the Pope, cultivate this sort of
prayer: “even if they experience the shortcomings of people and their distance
from God, in prayer they do not condemn them, they do not reject them”. The
intercessory attitude is proper to the saints who, in imitation of Jesus, are
“bridges” between God and His people, he added.
Finally, Pope Francis explained that Moses urges us to pray
with the same ardour as Jesus, to intercede for the world, to remember that
“despite all its frailties, it still belongs to God”. It is “thanks to the
blessing of the righteous, to the prayer for mercy that the saint, the
righteous person, the priest, the Bishop, the Pope, the layperson, anyone who
is baptised incessantly raises up for mankind, in every place and time in
history, that the world lives and thrives”. Pope Francis said when we get
angry, instead of condemning the person that we are angry with, "let's
intercede for him or her: that will help us a lot".
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