Copyright: Vatican Media
Pope Pushes for Access to Sacraments & Churches With Faithful (Full Text of Morning Homily)
Praying Also For Expectant Mothers, Says the ‘Ideal of the Church Is Always With the People and the Sacraments — Always’
Pope Francis has pushed for–always in the most cautious and prudent manner–there to be access to sacraments to the faithful. He has also stressed that the ideal of the Church is always to have the Sacraments and the people of God together, and that thinking otherwise is dangerous.
According to Vatican News, this was at the heart of the Pope’s homily today, April 17, during his private daily Mass at his residence Casa Santa Marta, as he reflected on today’s Gospel according to St. John (John 21: 1-14).
Praying for Expecting Mothers…
At the start of the Mass, while remembering all victims of coronavirus, Francis prayed for expecting mothers who may be scared.
“I wish that today we prayed for the women who are waiting, pregnant women who will become mothers and are restless, they worry,” he recognized, saying many ask themselves: “In what world will my child live?”
“Let us pray for them,” he exhorted, “so that the Lord will give them the courage to carry on these children with the confidence that it will certainly be a different world, but it will always be a world that the Lord will love so much.”
In his homily, the Holy Father reflected on how the Apostles and disciples were with Jesus, in community, not isolated, and how in this way, the Apostles’ familiarity with the Lord had grown.
“We Christians too, in our life’s journey are in this state of walking, of progressing in familiarity with the Lord,” Francis said, noting being Christian requires a daily familiarity with the Lord. The Jesuit Pope reminded how they ate together, spoke together, and spent quality time together.
This familiarity of Christians with the Lord, Francis said, is always of community. “Yes, it’s intimate, it’s personal but it’s in community,” he said.
A Familiarity With the Lord, Without Sacraments & People Is Dangerous
“A familiarity without community, without Bread, without the Church, without the people, without the Sacraments,” Francis stressed, “is dangerous.”
“It could become — let’s say –a gnostic familiarity, a familiarity only for myself, detached from the people of God. The Apostles’ familiarity with the Lord was always that of community, it was always at table, sign of community; it was always with the Sacrament, with the Bread.”
The Pope expressed that he wished to say this after someone made him reflect on the danger that this moment that we are living during this pandemic–that has made all of us communicate, including religiously, through the media, through the means of communication, also this Mass, we are all communicating–but not ‘together,’ only spiritually together.
Francis went on to analyze how we are ‘together’ spiritually, but not really together, and that the people connected with their priests and bishops only have Spiritual Communion.
“And this,” he underscored, “isn’t the Church: this is the Church of a difficult situation, which the Lord permits, but the ideal of the Church is always with the people and with the Sacraments — always.”
A Good Bishop Reproached Me …Then I Understood Why
Before Easter, when the news came out that I was to celebrate Easter in an empty Saint Peter’s, a Bishop wrote me — a good Bishop, good, and he reproached me. “But how come, Saint Peter’s is so big, why don’t you put at least 30 persons there, so that people are seen? There won’t be a danger . . . “I thought: “But what does he have in his head to say this to me?” At that moment, I didn’t understand. However, as he is a good Bishop, very close to the people, he must want to say something to me. When I meet him, I’ll ask him.
“Then I understood,” Francis noted. “He was saying to me: “Be careful not to virtualize the Church, to virtualize the Sacraments, to virtualize the People of God. The Church, the Sacraments, the People of God are concrete. It’s true that at this moment we must have this familiarity with the Lord in this way, but we must come out of the tunnel, not stay there.
This, Francis stressed, is the familiarity of the Apostles, “not gnostic,” “virtualized,” nor “egotistical for each one of them,” but a “concrete familiarity in the people — familiarity with the Lord in daily life, familiarity with the Lord in the Sacraments, in the midst of the People of God.”
Francis called on us to learn, like they did, how to undertake a path of maturity in familiarity with the Lord. They understood from the first moment, the Pope observed, that “this familiarity was different from that which they imagined,” but they eventually arrived at this, Francis said.
“They knew it was the Lord, they shared everything: the community, the Sacraments, the Lord, peace and celebration.”
Pope Francis concluded, praying: “May the Lord teach us this intimacy with Him, this familiarity with Him but in the Church, with the Sacraments, with the holy faithful people of God.”
The Masses in Francis’ chapel normally welcome a small group of faithful, but due to recent measures’ taken by the Vatican, are now being kept private, without their participation. The Holy Week and Easter celebrations in the Vatican were also done without the presence of faithful, but were able to be watched via streaming.
It was announced this month that the Pope would have these Masses, in this period, be available to all the world’s faithful, via streaming on Vatican Media, on weekdays, at 7 am Rome time, along with his weekly Angelus and General Audiences.
In Italy where more than 20,000 people have died from coronavirus, public Masses are still prohibited. To date, in the Vatican, there have been seven cases of coronavirus; at least two people healed.
The Vatican Museums are now closed, along with the Vatican’s other similar museums. There have also been various guidelines implemented throughout the Vatican, to prevent the spread of the virus.
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