Papa Prevost celebrates Mass pro Ecclesia with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. Before the homily, he speaks a few impromptu words in English, then invites everyone to witness their faith in places where it is considered absurd because “technology, money, success, power, and pleasure” are preferred. In some contexts, he adds, Jesus is reduced to merely a charismatic leader or a superhuman, even among many baptized individuals who end up living a practical atheism.
By: Tiziana Campisi – Vatican News
Publication Date:
Among the frescoes depicting Jesus judging the world in the main chapel of the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, where God creating man is displayed on the ceiling, Pope Leone XIV delivers his first homily in Mass with the cardinals. He immediately points out the path the Church must take, starting from the words of the apostle Peter who recognizes in Christ “the Son of the living God.” The Pope urges for a personal commitment with God in a “daily path of conversion,” then addresses the Church, calling for a shared “belonging to the Lord,” bringing “the Good News to all” and being “an ever more city on a hill, an ark of salvation sailing through the waves of history, a lighthouse that illuminates the world’s nights.”
The First Impromptu Words
In the same place where the 267th Pontiff was elected yesterday, and where tables and setups for the Conclave were quickly dismantled to make way for the altar and chairs for the cardinals, Leone XIV begins to speak impromptu in English, addressing the “brother cardinals” who have called him to the “ministry of Peter,” to “carry the cross and be blessed with this mission.” “I know I can count on each of you,” he says, “to walk with me as we continue as a Church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers in proclaiming the good news, in proclaiming the Gospel.”
Today, Witnessing the Gospel is Not Easy
But in his text, the Pope looks at the world, aware of the reality in which Christians are called to bring the Word of God.
Even today, there are many contexts where the Christian faith is considered absurd, for weak and unintelligent people; contexts where other securities, such as technology, money, success, power, and pleasure, are preferred over it. These are environments where it is not easy to witness and proclaim the Gospel, and where believers are ridiculed, opposed, despised, or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet, precisely for this reason, these are places where the mission is urgent.
The World Entrusted to Us
There is “a lack of faith” that “often brings with it dramas” such as “the loss of the meaning of life, the forgetfulness of mercy, the violation of the dignity of the person in its most dramatic forms,” lists the Pope, who does not forget “the crisis of the family and many other wounds from which our society suffers, not a little.” And there are also “contexts in which Jesus, appreciated as a man, is reduced only to a charismatic leader or a superhuman,” and this “not only among non-believers,” emphasizes Leone XIV, “but also among many baptized individuals, who unfortunately end up living,” an atheism in fact.”
This is the world entrusted to us, in which, as Pope Francis has taught us many times, we are called to bear joyful faith in Christ the Savior. Therefore, it is essential for us to repeat: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Disappear so Christ Remains
And then, the Pope speaks in the first person, “as the Successor of Peter,” recalling his “mission as the Bishop of the Church in Rome, called to preside in charity over the universal Church” and remembering the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a martyr in Rome: “I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world does not see my body.”
His words recall, in a more general sense, an irrevocable commitment for anyone in the Church exercising a ministry of authority: to disappear so that Christ remains, to become small so that He is known and glorified, to expend oneself completely so that no one lacks the opportunity to know and love Him. May God grant me this grace, today and always, with the help of the tender intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church.
A Model of Holy Humanity to Imitate
Before explaining the mission the Church must carry out today, the Pope focuses on Christ, “the only Savior and revealer of the Father’s face,” the one in whom “God, to draw near and be accessible to men, revealed Himself to us in the trusting eyes of a child, in the vivid mind of a young man, in the mature features of a man,” who then appeared “to His own after the resurrection” and “showed us a model of holy humanity that we can all imitate.” Without forgetting the “promise of an eternal destiny that surpasses all our limits and capabilities.”
The Gift of God to Announce
But the “inseparable dimensions of salvation,” entrusted to the Church to announce for the good of humanity, are “the gift of God and the path to walk to be transformed by it.” And for this reason, the Pope insists on his mandate once again.
God, calling me through your vote to succeed the First of the Apostles, entrusts this treasure to me so that, with His help, I may be a faithful steward for the whole mystical body of the Church.
Who is Jesus
Then, Leone XIV looks again at Christ, whom the world often considers “a person completely unimportant, at most a curious character who can evoke wonder with his unusual way of speaking and acting,” but a “disturbing presence for the demands of honesty and moral requirements it recalls,” and therefore to be rejected and eliminated. While ordinary people do not see him as a “charlatan” but as “an upright man, one who is courageous, who speaks well, and says the right things, like other great prophets in the history of Israel.” And for this reason, they follow him “at least as long as they can do so without too many risks and inconveniences.
Ma considerano solo un uomo, e quindi, durante la Passione, lo abbandonano e se ne vanno, delusi. Tuttavia, la Chiesa ha custodito per duemila anni il patrimonio della risposta di Pietro a Gesù: “Tu sei il Cristo, il Figlio del Dio vivente”.
Alla fine della celebrazione, i cardinali hanno salutato il Papa con un lungo applauso mentre usciva dalla Cappella Sistina.
