At 6:00pm local time today, inside the Vatican Basilica, the Holy Father, Pope Francis presided at the Eucharistic Celebration for the liturgical Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe.
The gospel that has just been proclaimed is the preface to two great canticles: the canticle of Mary, known as the Magnificat and the canticle of Zechariah, the Benedictus, and I like to call this one the canticle of Elizabeth or the canticle of fecundity. Thousands of Christians throughout the world begin each day singing: Blessed be the Lord and conclude the day proclaiming his greatness for he has looked with kindness upon the lowliness of his people. In this way, believers among various peoples, day after day, seek to keep a memory; to remember that from generation to generation, the mercy of God is extended toward every people as it has been promised to our fathers. And from this context of grateful memory comes Elizabeth's song, offered in the form of a question: Who am I that the mother of my Lord comes to visit me? Elizabeth, a woman marked by the sign of sterility, we find singing beautifully as she is marked with the sign of fruitfulness and amazement.
This evening, I would like to point out two aspects. Elizabeth, the woman marked by the sign of sterility and marked by the sign of fruitfulness.
1. Elizabeth is a sterile woman, with all that that implies for the religious mentality of the time, those who considered sterility as a divine punishment, the result of her own sin and that of her husband. A sign of shame for something committed in her own flesh or for which she considered herself to be guilty: a sin which she had not committed or because of which she felt very small because she had not lived up to that which was expected of her. Let us imagine, for a moment, the looks she would have received from her family members, from the neighbours, even from herself ... sterility that reached down deep and ended up paralyzing her entire life. Sterility that can take many names and forms each time that a person feels in his or her flesh the shame of being stigmatized or able to feel very little indeed.
We can perceive this sense of smallness in the little Indian Juan Diego, when he said to Mary”I, in fact, am not worth anything, I’m Mecapal, I’m Cacaxtle, I’m a tail, I’m a wing, feeling subservient to a foreign patron, these are not my whereabouts nor do I go there where you intend to send me (Nican Mopohua, 55). So this sentiment can also be – as the Latin American Bishops pointed out – in our Indian and Afro-American communities which, on many occasions, aren’t treated with dignity and equality of conditions; or in many women, who are excluded because of their sex, race or socio-economic situation; young people who receive a low-quality education and have no opportunities to make progress in their studies or to enter the labor market to develop themselves and form a family; many poor, unemployed, migrants, displaced, landless peasants, who try to survive in the informal economy; boys and girls subjected to child prostitution often linked to sexual tourism (Aparecida, 65).
2. And, together with Elizabeth, the sterile woman, we contemplate Elizabeth the fruitful-astonished woman. Elizabeth is the first to recognize and bless Mary. She it is who in her old age experienced in her life, in her flesh, the fulfillment of the promise made by God. She who could not have children bore in her womb the Precursor of salvation. We understand in her that God’s dream is not, nor will it be, sterility or stigmatizing His children or filling them with shame, but to make blossom in them and from them a song of blessing. We see this also in Juan Diego. It was in fact he, and no other, who bore in his tilma the image of the Virgin: the Virgin of dark skin and mestizo face, supported by an Angel with wings of quetzal, pelican and macaw; the Mother who is able to take on the features of her children to make them feel that they are part of her blessing.
It seems that again and again God is determined to show us the stone that the builders rejected, which becomes the cornerstone (cf Psalm 117:22).
Dear brothers, in the midst of this dialectic of fruitfulness-sterility let us look at the richness and cultural diversity of our peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean; this is a sign of the great richness that we are invited not only to cultivate but, especially in our time, to defend courageously against all attempts to homogenize, which ends by imposing – under attractive slogans – only one way of thinking, of being, of feeling, of living, which ends by invalidating or sterilizing all that we have inherited from our elders; which ends by making us feel, especially our young people, very small for belonging to this or that culture. In short, our fruitfulness calls us to defend our peoples from an ideological colonization that cancels the richest part of them, whether they are Indians, Afro-Americans, mestizos, peasants or suburbanites.
The Mother of God is the figure of the Church (Lumen Gentium, 63) and from her we want to learn to be a Church with a mestizo face, with an Indian, Afro-American, peasant face, or a boy or girl, old or young man, so that no one feels sterile or unfruitful, so that no one feels ashamed or small. But, on the contrary, so that each one, like Elizabeth and Juan Diego, feels him/herself to be the bearer of a promise, of a hope, and able to say from his/her innermost being: Abba!, namely, Father! (Galatians 4:6) from the mystery of that filiation that, without cancelling each one’s features, universalizes us constituting us a people.
Brothers, in this atmosphere of grateful memory for our being Latin Americans, let us sing Elizabeth’s canticle in our hearts, the song of fruitfulness, and let us say together to our peoples never tiring of repeating aloud: Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
(Original text in Spanish)
Homily of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the Mass celebrated on the Feast of
Our Lady of Guadalupe
The gospel that has just been proclaimed is the preface to two great canticles: the canticle of Mary, known as the Magnificat and the canticle of Zechariah, the Benedictus, and I like to call this one the canticle of Elizabeth or the canticle of fecundity. Thousands of Christians throughout the world begin each day singing: Blessed be the Lord and conclude the day proclaiming his greatness for he has looked with kindness upon the lowliness of his people. In this way, believers among various peoples, day after day, seek to keep a memory; to remember that from generation to generation, the mercy of God is extended toward every people as it has been promised to our fathers. And from this context of grateful memory comes Elizabeth's song, offered in the form of a question: Who am I that the mother of my Lord comes to visit me? Elizabeth, a woman marked by the sign of sterility, we find singing beautifully as she is marked with the sign of fruitfulness and amazement.
This evening, I would like to point out two aspects. Elizabeth, the woman marked by the sign of sterility and marked by the sign of fruitfulness.
1. Elizabeth is a sterile woman, with all that that implies for the religious mentality of the time, those who considered sterility as a divine punishment, the result of her own sin and that of her husband. A sign of shame for something committed in her own flesh or for which she considered herself to be guilty: a sin which she had not committed or because of which she felt very small because she had not lived up to that which was expected of her. Let us imagine, for a moment, the looks she would have received from her family members, from the neighbours, even from herself ... sterility that reached down deep and ended up paralyzing her entire life. Sterility that can take many names and forms each time that a person feels in his or her flesh the shame of being stigmatized or able to feel very little indeed.
We can perceive this sense of smallness in the little Indian Juan Diego, when he said to Mary”I, in fact, am not worth anything, I’m Mecapal, I’m Cacaxtle, I’m a tail, I’m a wing, feeling subservient to a foreign patron, these are not my whereabouts nor do I go there where you intend to send me (Nican Mopohua, 55). So this sentiment can also be – as the Latin American Bishops pointed out – in our Indian and Afro-American communities which, on many occasions, aren’t treated with dignity and equality of conditions; or in many women, who are excluded because of their sex, race or socio-economic situation; young people who receive a low-quality education and have no opportunities to make progress in their studies or to enter the labor market to develop themselves and form a family; many poor
2. And, together with Elizabeth, the sterile woman, we contemplate Elizabeth the fruitful-astonished woman. Elizabeth is the first to recognize and bless Mary. She it is who in her old age experienced in her life, in her flesh, the fulfillment of the promise made by God. She who could not have children bore in her womb the Precursor of salvation. We understand in her that God’s dream is not, nor will it be, sterility or stigmatizing His children or filling them with shame, but to make blossom in them and from them a song of blessing. We see this also in Juan Diego. It was in fact he, and no other, who bore in his tilma the image of the Virgin: the Virgin of dark skin and mestizo face, supported by an Angel with wings of quetzal, pelican and macaw; the Mother who is able to take on the features of her children to make them feel that they are part of her blessing.
It seems that again and again God is determined to show us the stone that the builders rejected, which becomes the cornerstone (cf Psalm 117:22).
Dear brothers, in the midst of this dialectic of fruitfulness-sterility let us look at the richness and cultural diversity of our peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean; this is a sign of the great richness that we are invited not only to cultivate but, especially in our time, to defend courageously against all attempts to homogenize, which ends by imposing – under attractive slogans – only one way of thinking, of being, of feeling, of living, which ends by invalidating or sterilizing all that we have inherited from our elders; which ends by making us feel, especially our young people, very small for belonging to this or that culture. In short, our fruitfulness calls us to defend our peoples from an ideological colonization that cancels the richest part of them, whether they are Indians, Afro-Americans, mestizos, peasants or suburbanites.
The Mother of God is the figure of the Church (Lumen Gentium, 63) and from her we want to learn to be a Church with a mestizo face, with an Indian, Afro-American, peasant face, or a boy or girl, old or young man, so that no one feels sterile or unfruitful, so that no one feels ashamed or small. But, on the contrary, so that each one, like Elizabeth and Juan Diego, feels him/herself to be the bearer of a promise, of a hope, and able to say from his/her innermost being: Abba!, namely, Father! (Galatians 4:6) from the mystery of that filiation that, without cancelling each one’s features, universalizes us constituting us a people.
Brothers, in this atmosphere of grateful memory for our being Latin Americans, let us sing Elizabeth’s canticle in our hearts, the song of fruitfulness, and let us say together to our peoples never tiring of repeating aloud: Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
(Original text in Spanish)
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