The grace to recognise when Jesus passes by, when he "knocks on our door", the grace "to recognise the time when we have been visited, are visited and will be visited". This is the prayer addressed to the Lord for every Christian by Pope Francis at the end of his homily during the Mass celebrated at Santa Marta on Thursday 17 November. A prayer not to fall into a "drama" repeated in history, from the origins to the present day: that of "not recognising God's love".
The Pontiff's meditation was inspired by the Gospel passage in which Luke (19:41-44) describes Jesus' weeping over the city of Jerusalem. "What did Jesus feel in his heart - the Pope asked - at this moment of his weeping? Why does Jesus weep over Jerusalem?". And the answer may come by leafing through the Bible: "Jesus remembers and recalls the whole history of the people, of his people. And he remembers his people's rejection of the Father's love".
Thus "in the heart of Jesus, in the memory of Jesus, at that moment, came the passages of the prophets". Like the one of Hosea - "I will seduce her, I will lead her into the wilderness and speak to her heart; I will make her my wife" - in which one encounters "God's enthusiasm and desire for his people", his "love". Or the words of Jeremiah: "Of you I remember the time of your youth, the time of your betrothal, your young love, when you followed me into the wilderness. But you turned away from me". And again: "What did your fathers find to turn away from me?", "Woe to you that your fathers turned away from me...".
The Pontiff tried to imagine the flow of memory that involved Jesus at that moment and again recalled the prophet Hosea: "When Israel was a child I loved him, but the more I called him, the more he turned away from me". What emerged was the 'drama of God's love and the turning away, the unfaithfulness of the people'. It was, he explained, 'what Jesus had in his heart': on the one hand the memory of a 'story of love', even of God's 'crazy' love for his people, a love without measure', and on the other hand the 'selfish, defiant, adulterous, idolatrous' response of the people.
There is then another aspect that emerges from the Gospel passage of the day. Jesus in fact complains about Jerusalem, "because," he says, "you have not recognised the time when you were visited by God, by the patriarchs, by the prophets". The Pontiff suggested that in Jesus' memory there was "that divinatory parable, the one about when the master sends one of his employees to ask for money: they beat him; and then another one they kill. Finally he sends his son and what do these people say? "But this is the son! This one has the inheritance.... Let's kill him! Let us kill him and the inheritance will be for us!" This is the explanation of what is meant by "the hour of visitation", that is, "Jesus is the son who comes and is not recognised. He is rejected!" In fact, in John's Gospel we read: 'He came to them and they did not accept him', 'the light came and the people chose darkness'. So it is this, Francis explained, "that makes the heart of Jesus Christ ache, this story of unfaithfulness, this story of not recognising God's caresses, God's love, of a God in love" who wants man's happiness.
Jesus, said the Pope, "saw at that moment what awaited him as Son. And he wept 'because this people did not recognise the time when he was visited'".
At this point the Pontiff's meditation turned to the daily life of every Christian, because, he said, "this drama did not happen only in history and ended with Jesus. It is the drama of every day'. Each of us can ask ourselves: 'Can I recognise the time in which I was visited? Does God visit me?"
To better understand the concept, Francis referred to last Tuesday's liturgy, which spoke of "three moments of God's visitation: to correct us; to enter into conversation with us; and to invite himself into our home". On that occasion it emerged that 'God stands, Jesus stands before us, and when he wants to correct us he says: "Wake up! Change your life! This is not good!" Then when he wants to speak to us he says: "I knock on the door and call. Open me!" Like when to Zacchaeus he said: "Get out!" to "get invited in".
So today we can ask ourselves: "How is my heart before the visit of Jesus?"". And also "make an examination of conscience: 'Am I attentive to what passes in my heart? Do I hear? Do I know how to listen to the words of Jesus, when he knocks at my door or when he says to me: "Wake up! Correct yourself!"; or when he says to me: "Come down, I want to dine with you"?". It is an important question because, the Pontiff warned, "each of us can fall into the same sin as the people of Israel, into the same sin as Jerusalem: not recognising the time in which we were visited".
In the face of so many of our certainties - 'But I am sure of my things. I go to Mass, I am sure' - we must remember that 'every day the Lord visits us, every day he knocks on our door'. And so 'we must learn to recognise this, so as not to end up in that very painful situation' found in the words of the prophet Hosea: 'The more I loved them, the more I called them, the more they turned away from me'. So the Pope repeated: 'Do you examine your conscience about this every day? Did the Lord visit me today? Have I felt any invitation, any inspiration to follow him more closely, to do a work of charity, to pray a little more?" In short, to do all those things to which "the Lord invites us every day to meet with us"?
The lesson that emerges from this meditation is therefore that "Jesus wept not only for Jerusalem, but for all of us", and that he "gives his life so that we may acknowledge his visitation". In this sense, the Pontiff recalled "a very strong phrase" of St Augustine: ""I am afraid of God, of Jesus, when he passes by!" - "But why are you afraid? - I am afraid of not recognising him!"". Therefore, the Pope concluded, "if you are not attentive to your heart, you will never know whether Jesus is visiting you or not."
[Pope Francis, St. Martha, in L'Osservatore Romano 18/11/2016]
With tears of a father and mother
Today God continues to weep - with tears of a father and a mother - before calamities, wars unleashed to worship the god of money, so many innocents killed by bombs, a humanity that does not seem to want peace. It is a strong invitation to conversion that Francis re-launched in the Mass celebrated on Thursday morning, 27 October, in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta. An invitation that the Pontiff motivated by recalling that God became man precisely to weep with and for his children.
In the passage from Luke's Gospel (13:31-35) proposed by the liturgy, the Pope explained, "it seems that Jesus had lost his patience and also uses strong words: it is not an insult but it is not a compliment to say 'fox' to a person". To be precise he says to the Pharisees who told him about Herod: "Go and tell that fox". But already "on other occasions Jesus spoke harshly": for example, he said "perverse and adulterous generation". And he called the disciples 'hard-hearted' and 'foolish'. Luke reports the words in which Jesus makes a real 'summary of what is to come: "it is necessary for me to go on my way because it is not possible for a prophet to die outside Jerusalem"'. Basically, the Lord "says what will happen, he prepares to die".
But "then immediately Jesus changes tones," Francis pointed out. "After this loud outburst," in fact, "he changes his tone and looks at his people, he looks at the city of Jerusalem: 'Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you!'" He looks at "the closed Jerusalem, which has not always received the messengers of the Father". And "Jesus' heart begins to speak with tenderness: 'Jerusalem, how often have I wanted to gather your children like a hen her chicks!'". Here is "the tenderness of God, the tenderness of Jesus". That day he "wept over Jerusalem". But "that weeping of Jesus," the Pope explained, "is not the weeping of a friend before the tomb of Lazarus. That is the weeping of a friend before the death of another"; instead "this is the weeping of a father who weeps, it is God the Father who weeps here in the person of Jesus".
"Someone said that God became man so that he could weep for what his children had done," said the Pontiff. And so "the weeping before the tomb of Lazarus is the weeping of a friend". But what Luke recounts 'is the weeping of the Father'. In this regard, Francis also recalled the attitude of the 'father of the prodigal son, when his youngest son asked him for the inheritance money and went away'. And "that father is sure, he did not go to his neighbours and say: 'look what happened to me, but this poor wretch what he did to me, I curse this son! No, he did not do this'. Instead, said the Pope, "I am sure" that that father "went off crying alone".
True, the Gospel does not reveal this detail,' Francis continued, 'but it tells us that when the son returned he saw the father from afar: this means that the father continually went up to the terrace to watch the path to see if the son was coming back'. And 'a father who does this is a father who lives in weeping, waiting for his son to return'. Precisely this is "the weeping of God the Father; and with this weeping the Father recreates in his Son all creation".
"When Jesus went with the cross to Calvary," the Pontiff recalled, "the pious women wept and he said to them: 'No, do not weep over me, weep for your children'". It is the "weeping of a father and mother that God continues to do even today: even today in the face of calamities, of the wars that are waged to worship the god money, of so many innocents killed by the bombs that the worshippers of the idol money throw down". And so 'even today the Father weeps, even today he says: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, my children, what are you doing?"'. And "he says this to the poor victims and also to the arms dealers and to all those who sell people's lives".
In conclusion Francis suggested that we "think that God became man in order to weep. And it will be good for us to think that our Father God weeps today: he weeps for this humanity that does not understand the peace he offers us, the peace of love".
[Pope Francis, St. Martha, in L'Osservatore Romano 27 October 2016]
