Vatican
City: On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis offered Mass in a nearly empty St.
Peter’s Basilica and urged Catholics quarantined at home to remember "what
really matters" in life: loving God and serving others.
“The tragedy we are experiencing summons us to
take seriously the things that are serious, and not to be caught up in those
that matter less; to rediscover that life is of no use if not used to serve
others. For life is measured by love,” Pope Francis said April 5 in his Palm
Sunday homily.
Holy Week liturgies at the Vatican are taking
without the presence of the public this year because of the coronavirus
pandemic.
During the Palm Sunday broadcast, the pope
said that Catholics can look to the suffering Christ as an example of a life
lived completely in the service of others.
“In these holy days, in our homes, let us
stand before the Crucified One -- look, look at the crucifix, the fullest
measure of God’s love for us, and before the God who serves us to the point of
giving his life, and let us ask for the grace to live in order to serve,” he
said.
Pope
Francis said that the coronavirus pandemic has allowed people to see that “the
real heroes” are not the “famous, rich and successful people,” but are those
who “are giving themselves in order to serve others.”
“May we reach out to those who are suffering
and those most in need. May we not be concerned about what we lack, but what
good we can do for others,” he said.
Pope Francis offered Mass at the Altar of the
Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica with the miraculous crucifix of San Marcello and
the Byzantine icon of Mary, Salus
Populi Romani, near the altar. Both icons were present in St. Peter’s Square
during the pope’s extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing on March 27.
“Jesus ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant’ ... His love for us led him to sacrifice himself and to take upon
himself our sins. This astonishes us: God saved us by taking upon himself all
the punishment of our sins. Without complaining, but with the humility,
patience and obedience of a servant, and purely out of love,” he said.
The pope asked: “What can we do in comparison
with God, who served us even to the point of being betrayed and abandoned?”
“We can refuse to betray him for whom we were
created, and not abandon what really matters in our lives. We were put in this
world to love him and our neighbors. Everything else passes away, only this
remains,” he said.
Pope Francis said that just as God the Father
sustained Jesus in the suffering in his Passion, the Lord also supports each
person whose love and service of others is a via crucis in itself.
“Today, in the tragedy of a pandemic, in the
face of the many false securities that have now crumbled, in the face of so
many hopes betrayed, in the sense of abandonment that weighs upon our hearts,
Jesus says to each one of us: ‘Courage, open your heart to my love. You will
feel the consolation of God who sustains you,’” Pope Francis said.
The pope led the Angelus prayer following the
Palm Sunday Mass. He urged Catholics to learn from the Blessed Virgin Mary, who
gazed upon her crucified son with inner silence and “the gaze of the heart.”
“Beloved, let us set out with faith this Holy
Week, in which Jesus suffers, dies and rises again. People and families who
cannot participate in liturgical celebrations are invited to gather in prayer
at home, also helped by technological means,” he said.
“Let us cling spiritually to the sick, to
their families and to those who treat them with self-sacrifice; let us pray for
the dead, in the light of paschal faith,” Pope Francis said.
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