FULL TEXT Pope Francis' Homily "In Jesus, born of Mary, the Eternal One enters the precariousness of our time, becomes forever and irreversibly ‘God-with-us’, and walks beside us..."


For the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Monday, Pope Francis presided over Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS

Basilica of Saint Peter
Monday, December 12, 2022
In his homily, the Pope said:
Our God leads the history of humanity at all times, nothing is left out of his power, which is tenderness and provident love. He makes himself present through a gesture, an event, a person. He does not stop looking into our world, needy, hurt, anxious, to assist it with his compassion and his mercy. His way of intervening, of manifesting, always surprises us and fills us with joy. He stupefies us, and he does it with his own style.

The reading of the letter to the Galatians offers us a precise indication that helps us to contemplate, with gratitude, his plan to redeem us and make us his adoptive children: "When the established time was fulfilled, God sent his Son, born of a woman". (Gal 4,4).

And so, the coming of the Son in human flesh is the supreme expression of his divine method in favor of salvation. God, who so loved the world, sent us his Son, "born of a woman", so that "everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16). Thus, in Jesus, born of Mary, the Eternal enters into the precariousness of our time, becomes forever, irreversibly "God-with-us" and walks by our side as brother and companion. He came to stay. Nothing of ours is strange to him because he is like "one of us", close, friend, equal to us in everything except sin.



And something like this, in this style, happened almost five centuries ago, at that complicated and difficult moment for the inhabitants of the new world, the Lord wanted to transform the commotion caused by the encounter between two different worlds into a recovery of meaning, a recovery of dignity. , in openness to the Gospel, transform it into an encounter. And he did so by sending Mary, his Mother, in the logic that today's Gospel reminds us of: after the angel's announcement, "Mary departed and went without delay to a mountain town" (Lk 1,39). . The Hasty Virgin. Thus our Lady of Guadalupe arrived in the blessed lands of America, presenting herself as the “Mother of the most true God for whom she lives” (cf. Nican Mopohua); and she came to console, to attend to the needs of the little ones, without excluding anyone, to wrap them up like a caring mother with her presence, her love and her comfort. She is our mixed-race Mother.

And this year we celebrate Guadalupe at a difficult time for humanity. It is a bitter period, full of the noise of war, growing injustices, shortages, poverty, suffering. There is hunger. And although this horizon appears gloomy and disconcerting, with omens of greater destruction and desolation, faith, love and divine condescension still teach us and tell us that this is also a propitious time of salvation, in which the Lord, through of the Virgin Mother of mixed race, continues to give us her Son, who calls us to be brothers, to put aside selfishness, indifference and antagonism, inviting us to take care of one another "without delay", to go out to meet the brothers and sisters forgotten and discarded by our consumerist and apathetic societies, our brothers and sisters left behind. And he does it without delay: she is the Mother in a hurry, in a hurry, the solicitous Mother.

Today like yesterday, Santa María de Guadalupe wants to meet us, like a day with Juan Diego on the Tepeyac hill. She wants to stay with us. She begs us to allow her to be our mother, to open our lives to her Son Jesus and to accept her message to learn to love like Him. She came to accompany the American people on this hard path of poverty, exploitation, socio-economic colonialism and cultural. She is in the middle of the caravans that, seeking freedom, walk north. She is in the midst of that American people whose identity is threatened by a savage and exploitative paganism, wounded by the active preaching of a practical and pragmatic atheism. And She is there. “I am your Mother”, she tells us herself. The Mother of love for whom she lives.

Today, December 12, the Intercontinental Guadalupana Novena begins in the American continent, a path that prepares for the celebration of the V Centennial of the Guadalupano Event in 2031. I exhort all the members of the Church that pilgrims in America, pastors and faithful, to participate in this celebratory path. But, please, that they do it with the true Guadalupan spirit. I am concerned about the ideological-cultural proposals of various kinds, who want to appropriate the encounter of a people with their Mother, who want to de-mestizo, make up the Mother. Please, let's not allow the message to be distilled into mundane and ideological patterns. The message is simple, it is tender: "Am I not here, that I am your Mother?". And the Mother is not ideologized.
May Jesus Christ, the one desired by all nations, through the intercession of Our Mother of Guadalupe, grant us days of joy and serenity, so that the peace of the Lord dwells in our hearts and in the hearts of all men and women of good will.
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Pope Francis also recalled the launch on Monday of an intercontinental prayer novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Americas, to prepare for the 5th centennial of the Guadalupian apparitions, in 2031.


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