Pope Francis at Mass says “Blessed are you among women because you have brought us the Blessed One” on Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe - FULL TEXT Homily + Video

 

BLESSED VIRGIN MARY OF GUADALUPE

HOLY MASS FOR LATIN AMERICA

HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS

Vatican Basilica
Saturday, 12 December 2020 

In today's Liturgy, three words, three ideas stand out: abundance , blessing and gift . And, looking at the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, we somehow also have the reflection of these three realities: abundance, blessing and gift.

L ' abundance , because God always gives in abundance, always gives in abundance. He doesn't know the doses. He lets himself be "measured out" by his patience. It is we who - by our very nature, by our limits - know the need for convenient installments. Instead, he gives himself in abundance, completely.  And where there is God, there is abundance.

Thinking about the mystery of Christmas, the Advent liturgy takes much of this idea of ​​abundance from the prophet Isaiah. God gives himself all, as he is, totally. Generosity can be - I like to think so - a "limit" of God (at least one!): The impossibility of giving oneself in a different way that is not in abundance.

The second word is blessing . Mary's meeting with Elizabeth is a blessing, a blessing. Blessing means “to say-well”. And God, from the first page of Genesis, has accustomed us to his style of saying well. The second word he pronounces, according to the Bible, is: "And it was good", "it is good", "it was very good". God's style is always to say well, so the curse is the style of the devil, of the enemy; the style of meanness, of the inability to give oneself totally, the "saying evil". God always says good things. And he says it with pleasure, he says it by giving himself. Good. He gives himself in abundance, saying well, blessing.

The third word is the gift . And this abundance, this saying well, is a gift, it is a gift. A gift that is given to us in the One who is all grace, who is all Him, all divinity: in the Blessed One. A gift that is given to us in She who is "full of grace", the "Blessed One". The Blessed by nature and the Blessed by grace: these are the two references that Scripture indicates. To her it is said: "blessed are you among women", "full of grace". Jesus is the Blessed one who brings the blessing.

And looking at the image of our Mother who awaits the Blessed, the full of grace that awaits the Blessed, we understand a little of this abundance, of saying good, of “blessing”. And we understand this gift, the gift of God who presented himself to us in the abundance of his Son, by nature, in the abundance of his Mother, by grace. God's gift presented itself to us as a blessing, in the Blessed by nature and in the Blessed by grace. This is the gift that God presents to us and that he continually wanted to highlight, to make it emerge in the course of revelation.

“Blessed are you among women because you have brought us the Blessed One” - “I am the Mother of God by whom we live, He who gives life, the Blessed”.

That, contemplating today the image of Our Mother, we can "steal" from God a little of this style that He has: generosity, abundance, "good-saying", never curse, and transform our life into a gift, a gift for everyone. So be it.