HOLY MASS ON THE OCCASION OF WORLD DAY OF MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS
Saint Peter’s Square
XXVI Sunday of Ordinary Time
29 September 2019
Today’s Responsorial Psalm reminds us that the Lord upholds the stranger as well as the widow and the orphan among his people. The Psalmist makes explicit mention of those persons who are especially vulnerable, often forgotten and subject to oppression. The Lord has a particular concern for foreigners, widows and orphans, for they are without rights, excluded and marginalized. This is why God tells the Israelites to give them special care.
In the Book of Exodus, the Lord warns his people not to mistreat in any way widows and orphans, for he hears their cry (cf. 22:23). Deuteronomy sounds the same warning twice (cf. 24:17; 27:19), and includes strangers among this group requiring protection. The reason for that warning is explained clearly in the same book: the God of Israel is the one who “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing” (10:18). This loving care for the less privileged is presented as a characteristic trait of the God of Israel and is likewise required, as a moral duty, of all those who would belong to his people.
That is why we must pay special attention to the strangers in our midst as well as to widows, orphans and all the outcasts of our time. In the Message for this 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, the theme “It is not Just about Migrants” is repeated as a refrain. And rightly so: it is not only about foreigners; it is about all those in existential peripheries who, together with migrants and refugees, are victims of the throwaway culture. The Lord calls us to practise charity towards them. He calls us to restore their humanity, as well as our own, and to leave no one behind.
Along with the exercise of charity, the Lord also invites us to think about the injustices that cause exclusion – and in particular the privileges of the few, who, in order to preserve their status, act to the detriment of the many. “Today’s world is increasingly becoming more elitist and cruel towards the excluded”: this is a painful truth; our word is daily more and more elitist, more cruel towards the excluded. “Developing countries continue to be drained of their best natural and human resources for the benefit of a few privileged markets. Wars only affect some regions of the world, yet weapons of war are produced and sold in other regions which are then unwilling to take in the refugees generated by these conflicts. Those who pay the price are always the little ones, the poor, the most vulnerable, who are prevented from sitting at the table and are left with the ‘crumbs’ of the banquet” (Message for the 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees).
It is in this context that the harsh words of the Prophet Amos proclaimed in the first reading (6:1.4-7) should be understood. Woe to those who are at ease and seek pleasure in Zion, who do not worry about the ruin of God’s people, even though it is in plain sight. They do not notice the destruction of Israel because they are too busy ensuring that they can still enjoy the good life, delicious food and fine drinks. It is striking how, twenty-eight centuries later, these warnings remain as timely as ever. For today too, the “culture of comfort… makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people… which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference” (Homily in Lampedusa, 8 July 2013).
In the end, we too risk becoming like that rich man in the Gospel who is unconcerned for the poor man Lazarus, “covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table” (Lk 16:20-21). Too intent on buying elegant clothes and organizing lavish banquets, the rich man in the parable is blind to Lazarus’s suffering. Overly concerned with preserving our own well-being, we too risk being blind to our brothers and sisters in difficulty.
Yet, as Christians, we cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to “our” group. We cannot remain insensitive, our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond. Let us ask the Lord for the grace of tears, the tears that can convert our hearts before such sins.
If we want to be men and women of God, as Saint Paul urges Timothy, we must “keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tm 6:14). The commandment is to love God and love our neighbour; the two cannot be separated! Loving our neighbour as ourselves means being firmly committed to building a more just world, in which everyone has access to the goods of the earth, in which all can develop as individuals and as families, and in which fundamental rights and dignity are guaranteed to all.
Loving our neighbour means feeling compassion for the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, drawing close to them, touching their sores and sharing their stories, and thus manifesting concretely God’s tender love for them. This means being a neighbour to all those who are mistreated and abandoned on the streets of our world, soothing their wounds and bringing them to the nearest shelter, where their needs can be met.
God gave this holy commandment to his people and sealed it with the blood of his Son Jesus, to be a source of blessing for all mankind. So that all together we can work to build the human family according to his original plan, revealed in Jesus Christ: all are brothers and sisters, all are sons and daughters of the same Father.
Today we also need a mother. So we entrust to the maternal love of Mary, Our Lady of the Way, of so many painful journeys, all migrants and refugees, together with those who live on the peripheries of our world and those who have chosen to share their journey.
© Copyright – Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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Editorial: The status quo won’t save the planet or the Catholic Church
Sep 26, 2019
A sense of urgency, quite unusual and perhaps unprecedented in degree, hangs over the upcoming Synod of Bishops for the Amazon region. It is a peculiarly 21st century phenomenon that bishops from a wide swath of the earth meet with such high stakes in the balance: the survival of the planet and the survival of the life of faith among Catholics in an area in extreme need of sacramental ministers.
Those needs, and the inherent consequences of ignoring them, may be as obvious to some as a time lapse display of melting arctic ice. However, amid increasing storms, disappearing glaciers, receding coastlines, the shifting of flora and fauna to match the new weather patterns, and a global supermajority of scientists informing us of imminent peril in unequivocal terms, there exist still, in high places, deniers of climate change.
An eerie parallel exists within the Catholic world. The clerical culture is crumbling. The old model of church — a well-staffed rectory and a convent full of sisters — still resident in the Catholic psyche as the ideal to be pursued, is long gone. It won’t return. In fact, it was, given the church’s timeline, a blip of a 20th century anomaly that existed, actually, in very few places. And given the legacy of scandal that followed in its wake, perhaps not an exemplary model after all.
It was high-consumption Catholicism, often ostentatious, meant to impress and to project an air of superiority. It has been excruciatingly humbled.
The equivalent of climate deniers in the Catholic world are those who refuse to acknowledge the melting credibility of the clerical and hierarchical structures, the extinction of a certain sense of superiority, the disappearance of young people, the diminishment of the life of faith absent the leadership of married people and, especially, women.
The local church reality in much of the world has been quite different from that of the Catholic heyday in, say, Boston or Philadelphia or Chicago. The Amazon synod brings that reality to the fore in concentrated form.
If the needs giving rise to the synod are unusual, the pushback against it is unprecedented. On the matter of climate science, the bishops will be pushing into gale force objections of international movers and shakers engaged in such activities as exploitative mining practices and illegal deforestation for agricultural purposes. They inflict incalculable damage to invaluable ecosystems and to the people who live there.
In the synod, formally titled “The Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for Integral Ecology,” the church will listen to the earth with a heightened sense of connection to it. It will acknowledge accountability for what is happening to, in the words of Pope Francis, our common home.
In that same setting, leaders will listen to the people of the church with a degree of openness to the needs discovered in local circumstances that is inspiring, if disconcerting to some.
Mauricio López Oropeza, a leader of the consultative process that involved some 90,000 people in the Amazon region, said “We were trying to transform the way the church participates in the different territories in the Amazon region, and trying to come to listen.”
Regarding critics of the working document for the synod, López told Vatican correspondent Joshua J. McElwee, “They have not even tried to go to the territory and experience the reality there.”
Among the loudest critics, not surprisingly, is U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, joined by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan. How much credence one should give to a two-person campaign against the pope is an open question, but they’ve attracted a great deal of attention in certain circles with their rather extensive charges — spoken, of course, in “love” for the pope and unspecified “souls” — against Francis. One paragraph of their screed is sufficient to get the gist:
No honest person can anymore deny the almost general doctrinal confusion which is reigning in the life of the Church in our days. This is particularly due to ambiguities regarding the indissolubility of marriage, which is being relativized through the practice of the admittance of persons cohabitating in irregular unions to Holy Communion, due to the increasing approval of homosexual acts, which are intrinsically contrary to nature and contrary to the revealed will of God, due to errors regarding the uniqueness of the Our Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work, which is being relativized through erroneous affirmations on the diversity of religions, and especially due to the recognition of diverse forms of paganism and their ritual practices through the Instrumentum Laboris for the coming Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon.
Enough said.
The instrumentum laboris, the working document, by the way, can be found here. It isn’t confusing. It is rather straightforward and, in places, powerfully rendered.
It is valuable to read for its own sake and to take in the magnificence of a global church confronting, from the point of view of universal vastness to the particulars of daily lives and species unaccounted for, existential issues of this era. It is valuable, too, should you require a measure for the degree of quackery and self-indulgence baked into Burke’s two-man campaign.
Like a climate denier, he would have us maintain the status quo or yearn for some non-existent golden era, no matter how damaging to the life of a faith community today. He frets elsewhere about the “practical abolition of priestly celibacy,” because of the suggestion that ordination of proven, older married men might provide a solution to the lack of priests throughout the Amazon. Does he forget that it was Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI who allowed the ordination of married men transferring from other denominations?
The synod on the Amazon, perhaps inadvertently, brings to a concentrated point a necessary discussion of the survival of the planet and the survival of a church undergoing unprecedented change. In either realm, survival does not lie in the status quo or returning to the way things were done in the past.
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KARL RAHNER ON THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY.
I share with you Harvey Egan´s peerless translation, from Karl Rahner´s “The Great Church Year”
“Today we celebrate the feast of Mary’s Assumption. After her quiet death, the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God entered, body and soul, into eternal life, the life of God himself. In Mary’s case, too, the fruit of death was life, and so this feast is also the anniversary day of a death. It is a question of that mysterious moment when time and eternity, transitoriness and immortality touch one another in the existence of one human being.
“We find in that life (Mary’s) – as in all things – that common trait of being bound up with and limited by time. Everything breathes the breath of evanescence . . . So everything that we do takes place in this temporal order. Everything is endlessly coming and going. People come into existence and pass away; they are born and they die . . . The shout of joy will someday fade away; all misery will one day be wept out; someday all power will vanish like smoke. Vanity of vanity, moaned Qohelet.
“Still, there is something in these things that does not pass away. Every wave of time that seems to rise only to sink back as if it had never existed lifts something up that it does not take back again into the frightening emptiness of the past. In the indifference of all coming and going there mysteriously lives something full of meaning, something eternal: good and evil. Good and evil are things of eternity; they are eternity in the things of time,
“It is at once a comforting and a frightful mystery: our deeds sink into nothingness, but before they die they give birth ot an eternal property that does not disappear with them. The eternal goodness and badness of our perishable works sink down into the eternal ground of imperishable spirit and shape this hidden ground .
“And the moment comes when a person passes out of the temporal order into eternity. When this happens, a stream of transitoriness vanishes forever. The restless fluctuation of time ceases to surge over a soul in endless rise and fall, and it sets free the ground of the soul that until now was seen by God alone. This means that an individual travels the path of his or her life through time into an eternity that is no longer time.
“Mary has traveled this path. Today we celebrate the day when for her time became eternity She too led this life of transitoriness. With her as with all the children of this earth, life was a restless coming to be and passing away. Her life began quietly and obscurely, somewhere in Palestine, and soon it was snuffed out, gently, and the world knew it not. In between these two points, her life was filled with same restless change that constitutes our life, and it was filled with the cares common to all Eve’s children: anxiety for bread, suffering and tears, and a few small joys.
“Mary’s life was one of transitoriness, just like our own. And yet, in one respect it was entirely different. How enigmatic and incomprehensible our life is -because of guilt. This is what makes our life so paradoxical and so confusing.
“We know of one person besides Jesus who can enter into eternity without repentance. This is Mary, the ever-pure Virgin, the immaculate one. What our heart in its bitter experience can hardly believe has become true for one human being – Mary. She need not disclaim one moment of her life; no part of it has remained empty and dead. She can stand by each deed of her life; not one was dark; not one passed away without enkindling and eternal light, without shining the luminosity that entirely consumes the moral possibilities of each moment.
“Such a life does not come to an end with Mary’s death; when she died, only the transitory died, so that what was eternal in her life might be revealed – that eternal light from the many thousand candles enkindled by each moment of her life. Thus her whole life entered eternity – each day, each hour, each breaking of the waves of her soul, every joy and every pain, the great and the small hours. Nothing was abandoned, everything lives on in the eternal goodness of the soul that has gone home.
“Is not such a day, a day of joy for us? We know, indeed from our experience, that our constantly changing human life hurries on towards its eternity, to its everlasting destiny.
“God affectionately calls each one of us by name . . . He has called us by countless names. He has therefore willed to entrust to us a sweet mystery of his heart; he has, as it were, placed us in intimate contact with those whom he has sheltered forever in his heart as his child, his friend, his betrothed. And thus we know that a blessed soul’s quite fixed life – a life which cannot be repeated once it is lived, which we can call by name – this life has not disappeared, but still lives.
“This is why the church celebrates feast upon feast of her saints, fresh again every day, birthdays of an eternity, feasts of delight because love never ceases . . . it is not true that everything passes away, for the good is immortal. Wherever in this world only a tiny light of purity, of kindness, of humility, of patience shines, it burns on before God’s eternal light as the reflection of his own eternally blessed light.
“Thus it is with the Virgin Mary. In faith we know that the charming splendor of grace that already filled her soul when the word of her maker called her into being is still and indestructible reality. The tender humility, the brightness of her grand spirit, the boundless submission to God – everything that filled her soul when she said, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord’ – all this is always present and new. The simple goodness of her life, the sacrifice of her Son under the cross: al this goodness and holiness that once brightened this dark world is eternal life that now, at this very hour, mixes its roar with the waves of divine life in the eternal today.
“When we, from the depths of our dying day, greet this eternal today, we will be greeted with the same endlessness of eternal life that has been roaring for two thousand years (in human measurement) and that shall never vanish . . .and then we look up, full of blessed hope, because in Mary’s bliss we see prefigured the blessed destiny that our soul shall one day find.
“This is why we should fold our hands and pray: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now in this transitoriness, which was also yours, in the hour of our death, so that we may enter the eternity that today is yours.”
If the priesthood is to be reformed, we must tackle the disease of clericalism. It won’t be easy. Clericalism is so deeply ingrained in our structures and way of thinking that we almost can’t imagine how things could be otherwise.
New to NCR! Visit our Obituaries pages to remember and celebrate the lives of those we have lost.
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In his 2018 “Letter to the People of God,” Pope Francis condemned the sins of sexual abuse and the abuse of power in the church. He linked those sins to clericalism. “To say no to abuse is to say an emphatic no to all forms of clericalism.”
What is clericalism?
The Association of U.S. Catholic Priests put out a white paper on clericalism in June 2019. It defines clericalism is “an expectation, leading to abuses of power, that ordained ministers are better than and should be over everyone else among the People of God.”
In other words: clerics (bishops and priests) are often trained to think they are set apart from and set above everyone else in the church. Their word is not to be questioned. Their behavior is not to be questioned. Their lifestyle is not be questioned. They rule over the church as if they were feudal lords in a feudal society. That is often how they see themselves — lords of the manor, complete with coats of arms, titles of nobility and all the perks that go with “superiority.”
It is not just clerics who are clerical. The laity often foster clericalism by always deferring to “Father” and putting “Father” on a pedestal. Clericalism is experienced in thousands of words and deeds that add up to a “culture” or atmosphere. Clericalism shows itself when:
· Seminarians say they are called to “chalices, not callouses.” (In other words, no physical work.)
· People say, “Nothing is too good for “Father.” Or, “Father never picks up the check.”
· Priests and bishops spend huge amounts of parish and diocesan money on themselves, with no controls. E.g., redecorating the rectory, building a new episcopal residence, taking lavish trips at church expense, or giving lavish gifts to each other with church money.
· When the priest says, “This is my parish. My way or the highway.”
· When 18-year-old college seminarians wear clerical garb to set themselves apart.
· When parents tell their children, “Never question a priest.”
· When people say that “the priests are ‘next to God.’ “
· When bishops prioritize avoiding scandal over protecting victims of abuse by priests.
· When thriving parishes are closed because there is a shortage of priests when there are deacons and lay people readily available to keep the community going.
All those things are symptoms of clericalism. The culture of clericalism can have horrific consequences.
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The 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury set up to study clerical sexual abuse gave some egregious examples of priests and bishops who were protected from the consequences of sexual abuse by a “culture” of clericalism. Priests were routinely transferred around to avoid scandal, but nothing was done to warn the people in their new assignments. Priests were returned to ministry after “treatment” in church-run treatment centers that were not professionally staffed or competently run. Even after there was proven abuse and removal from ministry, priests continued to receive financial support while dioceses played hardball with their victims. Confidentiality agreements forced upon victims as part of settlement served only to shield the church from scandal and clerics from the consequences of their actions.
The Pennsylvania grand jury report gave several examples of children being beaten for talking “badly” about a priest when they came forward with their stories of abuse. In one case a girl who told her pastor of a sexual assault on her by another priest in the parish was humiliated in front of her biological father and told to recant that “made up story” of her assault. The grand jury said, “Her father did not believe her and proceeded to drag her home, yelling at her and slapping her along the way. When they finally got home, she was beaten more by her father, this time with a belt so that the belt buckle would strike her.”
So long as a “culture” of clericalism means that parents believe priests over the anguished stories of their own children, it will be very hard to hold priests and bishops accountable.
Even Pope Francis is guilty of this sort of clerical preference for some Vatican insiders. When Australian Cardinal George Pell was convicted of sexual abuse of several boys by the court in Australia, he was allowed to continue as prefect for the economy (the money guy) in the Vatican, pending appeal. One of Pell’s victims had committed suicide. Pell, like former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was protected by clericalism. He was a member of the most exclusive “old boys” club in the church, the College of Cardinals.
In a way, priests and bishops are also “victims” of clericalism. If clericalism puts us on a pedestal, it also isolates clergy from ordinary friendships. We are always, “Father” or “Your Excellency” and never just Peter or Jim. If clericalism gives the priest and bishop greater control, it also gives them greater responsibility. Having unquestioned “authority” to speak on so many matters also means that priests are expected to have answers beyond their competence.
The Association of U.S. Catholic Priests report also observed, “Clericalism in lay people blocks the necessary feedback that helps keep the Church faithful to the gospel, and it blocks the feedback the ordained need to properly serve the community.”
The laity, the clergy, and the church all suffer from the culture of clericalism. It distorts our human relationships and corrupts the body of Christ.
Worst of all, it is not faithful to the vision of Christ. He calls on us all to be servant leaders, not imperious rulers.
You know how those who exercise authority among the Gentiles lord it over them; their great ones make their importance felt. It cannot be like that with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest, and whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all. Such is the case with the Son of Man who has come not be served by others but to serve, to give his life as ransom for the many (Matthew 20:25-28).
[Fr. Peter Daly is a retired priest of the Washington Archdiocese and a lawyer. After 31 years of parish service, he now works with Catholic Charities.]
Editor’s note: We can send you an email alert every time Fr. Peter Daly’s column, Priestly Diary (formerly called Parish Diary), is posted. Go to this page and follow directions: Email alert sign-up.
Blessed Stanley Rother
(March 27, 1935 – July 28, 1981)
Blessed Stanley Rother’s Story
On May 25, 1963, Stanley Rother, a farmer from Okarche, Oklahoma, was ordained for his home diocese of Oklahoma City-Tulsa. Having flunked out of the area seminary due to his difficulty with Latin, Fr. Rother finally accepted an invitation to attend Mount St. Mary Seminary in Maryland, where he finished his studies and was approved for ordination.
After serving in his local diocese for five years, Fr. Rother joined five priests, three religious sisters, and three laypersons to staff a Guatemalan mission in Santiago Atitlán serving the Tz’utujil people. The Oklahoma City diocese heard the call of Pope John XXIII to send missionaries to foreign lands, especially Central America. These twelve individuals felt the call, and with their bishop’s approval, left the comforts of the United States to live and work in Guatemala.
By 1975, Fr. Rother was alone at his parish in Santiago Atitlán, the others having returned home for various reasons. He served the Tz’utujil people for 13 years and won their hearts and souls. Ever the farmer, and always unpretentious and mild mannered, Fr. Rother experimented with various crops as well as fulfilling his heavy pastoral duties which included as many as five Masses in four different locations on a given Sunday and as many as 1,000 baptisms a year.
Guatemala’s civil war reached the highlands and Lake Atitlán by 1980. Government troops camped on the parish farm and Fr. Rother witnessed the assassination of a number of his parishioners, including the parish deacon.
Warned of imminent danger, Fr. Rother returned to the United States for three months early in 1981, to visit with his family and friends. Against the advice of his family and the local bishop, Fr. Rother returned to Atitlán to be with his people. He remembered a Sisters’ community who had fled the country and later tried to return but the people asked, “Where were you when we needed you?”
On the evening of July 28, three masked men entered the rectory and shot Fr. Rother to death. His beloved parishioners mourned him repeatedly crying, “They have killed our priest.”
Pope Francis declared Stanley Rother a martyr on December 2, 2016. He was beatified in Oklahoma City on September 23, 2017.
THE IMMIGRATION RAIDS: TWO TRAGEDIES AND THE PROPHETS
The first tragedy is the pain, the anguish and the cry of the victims – separated families, dreams shattered, inhuman treatment . . .
The second tragedy is the silence of the bishops – Certainly, there are exceptions: Cupich, Tobin, others – but by and large, there is the deafening roar of silence – Fear of fulfilling the prophetic commitment they made when they were consecrated “episkopoi” of their communities – Fear of alienating the wealthy in their dioceses, those who contribute the money for their opulent rectories and marble altars
Once again, our faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, who speaks to us through the prophets he sends, those of old, the prophets of Israel, and those we have been privileged to walk the earth with – Let us listen to them:
“Those who, in the biblical phrase, would save their lives—that is, those who want to get along, who don’t want commitments, who don’t want to get into problems, who want to stay outside of a situation that demands the involvement of all of us—they will lose their lives. What a terrible thing to have lived quite comfortably, with no suffering, not getting involved in problems, quite tranquil, quite settled, with good connections politically, economically, socially—lacking nothing, having everything. To what good? They will lose their lives.” ― Oscar A. Romero
I never expected much of the bishops . . .
In all history, popes and bishops and abbots seem
to have been blind and power-loving and greedy.
I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints
that keep appearing all through history who keep things
going. What I do expect is the bread of life and down
through the ages there is that continuity
DOROTHY DAY,
Today, July 8, marks the eight anniversary of Pope Francis’ visit to the immigration-processing island of Lampedusa. This was his first official visit outside the Vatican-and it was, indeed, a reflection of his prophetic soul, and of future passionate prophetic utterances, that he chose not a basilica, or a triumphant jaunt to his native Argentina, or a grand celebration somewhere within the purview of diplomatic and ecclesiastical protocol – but, rather, a place of pain, anguish and uncertainty – a processing-center for immigrants, most of them fleeing from Africa or, via Greece, from wars in the Middle East . . .
His words are well-remembered by a few, but, like all provoking, subversive words that most people just don’t like to hear, quickly consigned to oblivion, to memory-repressing mechanisms by many – Who likes to hear – or remember –words about dozens of immigrants fleeing famine or violence, attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Italy and dying in a shipwreck – as it had indeed occurred a few weeks before Pope Francis’ visit?
Eight years later, as we struggle not to drown or be totally discouraged and frustrated by ever-rising waters of the rhetoric of racism, hatred, fear of immigrants and xenophobia, we need to re-visit those words – Below, I include the text of Pope Francis’ convulsing, subversive homily at Lampedusa, preached in a day like today, July 8, in 2013.
[ DE – EN – ES – FR – IT – PT ]
HOMILY OF HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
“Arena” sports camp, Salina Quarter
Monday, 8 July 2013
Immigrants dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became vehicles of death. That is how the headlines put it. When I first heard of this tragedy a few weeks ago, and realized that it happens all too frequently, it has constantly come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So I felt that I had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated. Please, let it not be repeated! First, however, I want to say a word of heartfelt gratitude and encouragement to you, the people of Lampedusa and Linosa, and to the various associations, volunteers and security personnel who continue to attend to the needs of people journeying towards a better future. You are so few, and yet you offer an example of solidarity! Thank you! I also thank Archbishop Francesco Montenegro for all his help, his efforts and his close pastoral care. I offer a cordial greeting to Mayor Giusi Nicolini: thank you so much for what you have done and are doing. I also think with affection of those Muslim immigrants who this evening begin the fast of Ramadan, which I trust will bear abundant spiritual fruit. The Church is at your side as you seek a more dignified life for yourselves and your families. To all of you: o’scià!
This morning, in the light of God’s word which has just been proclaimed, I wish to offer some thoughts meant to challenge people’s consciences and lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart.
“Adam, where are you?” This is the first question which God asks man after his sin. “Adam, where are you?” Adam lost his bearings, his place in creation, because he thought he could be powerful, able to control everything, to be God. Harmony was lost; man erred and this error occurs over and over again also in relationships with others. “The other” is no longer a brother or sister to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life and my comfort. God asks a second question: “Cain, where is your brother?” The illusion of being powerful, of being as great as God, even of being God himself, leads to a whole series of errors, a chain of death, even to the spilling of a brother’s blood!
God’s two questions echo even today, as forcefully as ever! How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another! And when humanity as a whole loses its bearings, it results in tragedies like the one we have witnessed.
“Where is your brother?” His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God! Once again I thank you, the people of Lampedusa, for your solidarity. I recently listened to one of these brothers of ours. Before arriving here, he and the others were at the mercy of traffickers, people who exploit the poverty of others, people who live off the misery of others. How much these people have suffered! Some of them never made it here.
“Where is your brother?” Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish literature we have a comedy of Lope de Vega which tells how the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna kill their governor because he is a tyrant. They do it in such a way that no one knows who the actual killer is. So when the royal judge asks: “Who killed the governor?”, they all reply: “Fuente Ovejuna, sir”. Everybody and nobody! Today too, the question has to be asked: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each of us: “Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?” Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: “poor soul…!”, and then go on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!
Here we can think of Manzoni’s character – “the Unnamed”. The globalization of indifference makes us all “unnamed”, responsible, yet nameless and faceless.
“Adam, where are you?” “Where is your brother?” These are the two questions which God asks at the dawn of human history, and which he also asks each man and woman in our own day, which he also asks us. But I would like us to ask a third question: “Has any one of us wept because of this situation and others like it?” Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – “suffering with” others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great lamentation: “Rachel weeps for her children… because they are no more”. Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap bubble. And so it continues… Let us ask the Lord to remove the part of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this. “Has any one wept?” Today has anyone wept in our world?
Lord, in this liturgy, a penitential liturgy, we beg forgiveness for our indifference to so many of our brothers and sisters. Father, we ask your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts; we beg your forgiveness for those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!
Today too, Lord, we hear you asking: “Adam, where are you?” “Where is the blood of your brother?”
At the end of Mass, the Pope said the following words :
Before imparting my blessing to you I want to thank you once again; you people of Lampedusa, for the example of love, charity and hospitality that you have set us and are still setting us. The Bishop said that Lampedusa is a beacon. May this example be a beacon that shines throughout the world, so that people will have the courage to welcome those in search of a better life. Thank you for bearing this witness! And I also want to thank you for your tenderness which I have felt in Fr Stefano himself. He told me on the boat what he and the parochial vicar do. I thank you all, and I thank you, Fr Stefano.
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