HOLY MASS IN THE BASILICA OF THE SHRINE OF
OUR LADY OF THE CONCEPTION OF APARECIDA
OUR LADY OF THE CONCEPTION OF APARECIDA
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Your Eminence,
My Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
My Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
What joy I feel as I come to the house of the Mother of every Brazilian,
the Shrine of our Lady of Aparecida! The day after my election as Bishop of
Rome, I visited the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, in order to entrust
my ministry to Our Lady. Today I have come here to ask Mary our Mother for the
success of World
Youth Day and to place at her feet the
life of the people of Latin America.
There is something that I would like to say first of
all. Six years ago the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America
and the Caribbean was held in this Shrine.
[…] When the Church looks for Jesus, she always knocks at his Mother’s
door and asks: “Show us Jesus”. It is from Mary that the Church learns true
discipleship. That is why the Church always goes out on mission in the
footsteps of Mary.
Today, looking forward to the World Youth Day which
has brought me to Brazil, I too come to knock on the door of the house of Mary
– who loved and raised Jesus – that she may help all of us […]. For this reason I would like to speak of three
simple attitudes: hopefulness, openness to being surprised by God, and living
in joy.
1. Hopefulness. The second reading of the Mass
presents a dramatic scene: a woman – an image of Mary and the Church – is being
pursued by a Dragon – the devil – who wants to devour her child. But the scene
is not one of death but of life, because God intervenes and saves the child
(cf. Rev 12:13a, 15-16a). How many difficulties are present in the life of
every individual, among our people, in our communities; yet as great as these
may seem, God never allows us to be overwhelmed by them. In the face of those
moments of discouragement we experience in life, in our efforts to evangelize
or to embody our faith as parents within the family, I would like to say
forcefully: Always know in your heart that God is by your side; he never
abandons you! Let us never lose hope! Let us never allow it to die in our
hearts! The “dragon”, evil, is present in our history, but it does not have the
upper hand. The one with the upper hand is God, and God is our hope! It is true
that nowadays, to some extent, everyone,
including our young people, feels
attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer
hope: money, success, power, pleasure. Often a growing sense of loneliness and
emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these
ephemeral idols. Dear brothers and sisters, let us be lights of hope! Let us
maintain a positive outlook on reality. Let us encourage the generosity which
is typical of the young and help them to work actively in building a better
world. Young people are a powerful engine for the Church and for society. They
do not need material things alone; also and above all, they need to have held
up to them those non-material values which are the spiritual heart of a people,
the memory of a people. In this Shrine, which is part of the memory of Brazil,
we can almost read those values: spirituality, generosity, solidarity,
perseverance, fraternity, joy; they are values whose deepest root is in the
Christian faith.
2. The second attitude: openness to being surprised by
God. Anyone who is a man or a woman of hope – the great hope which faith gives
us – knows that even in the midst of difficulties God acts and he surprises us.
The history of this Shrine is a good example: three fishermen, after a day of
catching no fish, found something unexpected in the waters of the ParnaĆba
River: an image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Whoever would have
thought that the site of a fruitless fishing expedition would become the place
where all
Brazilians can feel that they are children of one Mother? God always
surprises us, like the new wine in the Gospel we have just heard. God always
saves the best for us. But he asks us to let ourselves be surprised by his
love, to accept his surprises. Let us trust God! Cut off from him, the wine of
joy, the wine of hope, runs out. If we draw near to him, if we stay with him,
what seems to be cold water, difficulty, sin, is changed into the new wine of
friendship with him.
3. The third attitude: living in joy. Dear friends, if
we walk in hope, allowing ourselves to be surprised by the new wine which Jesus
offers us, we have joy in our hearts and we cannot fail to be witnesses of this
joy. Christians are joyful, they are never gloomy. God is at our side. We have
a Mother who always intercedes for the life of her children, for us, as Queen
Esther did in the first reading (cf Est 5:3). Jesus has shown us that the face
of God is that of a loving Father. Sin and death have been defeated. Christians
cannot be pessimists! They do not look like someone in constant mourning. If we
are truly in love with Christ and if we sense how much he loves us, our heart
will “light up” with a joy that spreads to everyone around us. As Benedict XVI
said here, in this Shrine: “the disciple knows that without Christ, there is no
light, no hope, no love, no future” (Inaugural
Address, Fifth General Conference of
the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Aparecida, 13 May 2007, 3).
Dear friends, we have come to knock at the door of
Mary’s house. She has opened it for us, she has let us in and she shows us her
Son. Now she asks us to “do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). Yes, Mother, we
are committed to doing whatever Jesus tells us! And we will do it with hope,
trusting in God’s surprises and full of joy. Amen.
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