At 7:00am local time this morning (1:00am EST), the Holy Father, Pope Francis celebrated Mass inside the chapel at the Casa Santa Marta.
During these days, we join with the sick and their families who are suffering during this pandemic. I also want to pray today for the pastors who must accompany the people of God in this crisis. May the Lord give them the strength and also the ability to choose the best ways to help. Drastic measures are not always good. For this reason, we must pray that the Holy Spirit will give our pastors the ability and pastoral discernment they need to provide measures that will never leave the holy and faithful people of God alone. May the people of God always feel that they are being accompanied by their pastors who provide the comfort of the Word of God, the Sacraments and their prayer.
Both the readings are a prophecy of the Lord's passion. Joseph, sold as a slave for twenty silver coins ... consigned to pagans ... and Jesus words, who is clearly speaking in symbolic language about the execution of the son.
This story is about a man who owned some land and planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower (Mt 21:33). He paid attention to it. He did it well. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. This is God's people. The Lord chooses this people. God chose these people; they are the chosen people. There is also a promise made, as they go on. You will be my people - the promise that was made to Abraham. And there is also a covenant made with this people, a covenant that was made at Saini. The people should always keep this covenant in their memory: election, the fact that they are a chosen people; the promise, that they can look forward to something; hope and a covenant so that they can live in faithfulness every day.
In this parable (Mt 21:33-43; 45-46), it happens that when vintage time drew near, the people had forgotten that they were not the owners. The tenants seized the servants; one they beat, another they killed and a third they stoned. Then, he sent other servants, more numerous ... but they treated them in the same way (Mt 21:35-36). Certainly, in this image, Jesus is helping us to understand how these words addressed to the doctors of the Law were aimed at the way that these doctors of the Law had treated the prophets. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking that they would have respect for his own son, but the tenants saw the son and said to one another, 'This is the heir, come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance (Mt 21:38). They robbed him of his inheritance, which was a most serious affair.
This is a story of infidelity: infidelity to the choice of God's people, infidelity to the promise that God had made, infidelity to God's covenant which is a gift. God's choice of his people, his promise, his covenant is God's gift. Infidelity to the gift of God. Not to understand that it was a gift, we take it as property. This people improperly understood the gift, and they ended up thinking that what was a gift was their own property. A gift, which requires us to be open and to bless, but they remained closed, incapable of understanding ... a doctrine of laws. Many of them were focused on ideologies ... and so the gift lost its very nature of being a gift ... and they ended up with an ideology. Above all, this is a moralistic ideology, full of precepts, even ridiculous, for it descends to the level of casuistry, in every case.
They misunderstood the gift, and this was a great sin. The sin of forgetting that God offered himself as a gift for us, that God has given us his very self as a gift. Forgetting this, we become our own bosses, and the promise is no longer a promise, our election is no longer a matter of choice, and the covenant will be interpreted according to my own needs. Ideologization.
In this illustration, I see perhaps the beginning of the gospel of clericalism, which is a perversion that always denies God's free choice, God's freely offered covenant, God's freely given promise. We forget the free-ness of revelation, we forget that God was made known as a gift, He made Himself a gift for us, and we should give Him, make him known to others as a gift, not as though He were one of our possessions. Clericalism is not something new; rigidity is not something new; they already existed in the time of Jesus. And then Jesus went further in his explication of the words - this is made clear in chapter 21. He kept going up to chapter 23 with the condemning, and we need to see the hatred of God toward those who take his gift for their own possession, and who reduce his richness to ideological capriciousness within their own minds.
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to receive His gift as a gift, and to pass on His gift as a gift, not as though it were property, not in a dry way, a rigid way, a clericalistic way.
Greetings of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
prior to the celebration of the Mass
During these days, we join with the sick and their families who are suffering during this pandemic. I also want to pray today for the pastors who must accompany the people of God in this crisis. May the Lord give them the strength and also the ability to choose the best ways to help. Drastic measures are not always good. For this reason, we must pray that the Holy Spirit will give our pastors the ability and pastoral discernment they need to provide measures that will never leave the holy and faithful people of God alone. May the people of God always feel that they are being accompanied by their pastors who provide the comfort of the Word of God, the Sacraments and their prayer.
Homily of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
during the Mass celebrated on 13 March 2020
Both the readings are a prophecy of the Lord's passion. Joseph, sold as a slave for twenty silver coins ... consigned to pagans ... and Jesus words, who is clearly speaking in symbolic language about the execution of the son.
This story is about a man who owned some land and planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower (Mt 21:33). He paid attention to it. He did it well. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. This is God's people. The Lord chooses this people. God chose these people; they are the chosen people. There is also a promise made, as they go on. You will be my people - the promise that was made to Abraham. And there is also a covenant made with this people, a covenant that was made at Saini. The people should always keep this covenant in their memory: election, the fact that they are a chosen people; the promise, that they can look forward to something; hope and a covenant so that they can live in faithfulness every day.
In this parable (Mt 21:33-43; 45-46), it happens that when vintage time drew near, the people had forgotten that they were not the owners. The tenants seized the servants; one they beat, another they killed and a third they stoned. Then, he sent other servants, more numerous ... but they treated them in the same way (Mt 21:35-36). Certainly, in this image, Jesus is helping us to understand how these words addressed to the doctors of the Law were aimed at the way that these doctors of the Law had treated the prophets. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking that they would have respect for his own son, but the tenants saw the son and said to one another, 'This is the heir, come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance (Mt 21:38). They robbed him of his inheritance, which was a most serious affair.
This is a story of infidelity: infidelity to the choice of God's people, infidelity to the promise that God had made, infidelity to God's covenant which is a gift. God's choice of his people, his promise, his covenant is God's gift. Infidelity to the gift of God. Not to understand that it was a gift, we take it as property. This people improperly understood the gift, and they ended up thinking that what was a gift was their own property. A gift, which requires us to be open and to bless, but they remained closed, incapable of understanding ... a doctrine of laws. Many of them were focused on ideologies ... and so the gift lost its very nature of being a gift ... and they ended up with an ideology. Above all, this is a moralistic ideology, full of precepts, even ridiculous, for it descends to the level of casuistry, in every case.
They misunderstood the gift, and this was a great sin. The sin of forgetting that God offered himself as a gift for us, that God has given us his very self as a gift. Forgetting this, we become our own bosses, and the promise is no longer a promise, our election is no longer a matter of choice, and the covenant will be interpreted according to my own needs. Ideologization.
In this illustration, I see perhaps the beginning of the gospel of clericalism, which is a perversion that always denies God's free choice, God's freely offered covenant, God's freely given promise. We forget the free-ness of revelation, we forget that God was made known as a gift, He made Himself a gift for us, and we should give Him, make him known to others as a gift, not as though He were one of our possessions. Clericalism is not something new; rigidity is not something new; they already existed in the time of Jesus. And then Jesus went further in his explication of the words - this is made clear in chapter 21. He kept going up to chapter 23 with the condemning, and we need to see the hatred of God toward those who take his gift for their own possession, and who reduce his richness to ideological capriciousness within their own minds.
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to receive His gift as a gift, and to pass on His gift as a gift, not as though it were property, not in a dry way, a rigid way, a clericalistic way.
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