Pope Francis at Tuesday Mass: reflecting on our Mother Church
(Vatican Radio) The Church has the courage of a woman who defends her children, in
order to bring them to encounter her Spouse. This was one of the main focal points
of Pope Francis’ remarks following the readings at Mass on Tuesday morning in the
chapel of the Domus sanctae Marthae in the Vatican. The Pope also reflected on the
encounter between Jesus and the widow of Naim, saying that the Church herself is,
in history, walking in search of her Lord. Listen:
Jesus has,
“the capacity to suffer with us, to be close to our sufferings and make them His own,”
said Pope Francis, who began his reflections with the encounter between Jesus and
the widow of Naim, of which Tuesday’s Gospel reading tells. He pointed out that Jesus,
“had great compassion” for this widow who had now lost her son. Jesus, he went on
to say, “knew what it meant to be a widow at that time,” and noted that the Lord has
a special love for widows, He cares for them.” Reading this passage of the Gospel,
he then said, that the widow is, “an icon of the Church , because the Church is in
a sense widow”:
“The Bridegroom is gone and she walks in history, hoping to
find him, to meet with Him – and she will be His true bride. In the meantime she -
the Church - is alone! The Lord is nowhere to be seen. She has a certain dimension
of widowhood ... and that makes me makes me think of the widowhood of the Church.
This courageous Church, which defends her children, like the widow who went to the
corrupt judge to [press her rights] and eventually won. Our Mother Church is courageous!
She has the courage of a woman who knows that her children are her own, and must defend
them and bring them to the meeting with her Spouse.”
The Pope reflected on
some figures of widows in the Bible, in particular the courageous Maccabean widow
with seven sons who are martyred for not renouncing God. The Bible, he stressed, says
this woman who spoke to her sons “in the local dialect, in their first language,”
and, he noted, our Mother Church speaks to us in dialect, in “that language of true
orthodoxy, which we all understand, the language of catechism,” that, “gives us the
strength to go forward in the fight against evil”:
“This dimension of widowhood
of the Church, who is journeying through history, hoping to meet, to find her Husband…
Our Mother the Church is thus! She is a Church that, when she is faithful, knows how
to cry. When the Church does not cry, something is not right. She weeps for her children,
and prays! A Church that goes forward and does rear her children, gives them strength
and accompanies them until the final farewell in order to leave them in the hands
of her Spouse, who at the end will come to encounter her. This is our Mother Church!
I see her in this weeping widow. And what does the Lord say to the Church? “Do not
cry. I am with you, I’ll take you, I’ll wait for you there, in the wedding, the last
nuptials, those of the Lamb. Stop [your tears]: this son of yours was dead, now he
lives.”
And this , he continued, “is the dialogue of the Lord with the Church.”
She, “defends the children, but when she sees that the children are dead, she crys,
and the Lord says to her: ‘I am with you and your son is with me.’” As he told the
boy at Naim to get up from his deathbed, the Pope added, many times Jesus also tells
us to get up, “when we are dead because of sin and we are going to ask for forgiveness.”
And then what does Jesus “when He forgives us, when He gives us back our life?” He
Returns us to our mother:
“Our reconciliation with the Lord end in the dialogue
‘You, me and the priest who gives me pardon’; it ends when He restores us to our mother.
There ends reconciliation, because there is no path of life, there is no forgiveness,
there is no reconciliation outside of Mother Church. So, seeing this poor widow, all
these things come to me somewhat randomly - But I see in this widow the icon of the
widowhood of the Church who is on a journey to find her Bridegroom. I get the urge
to ask the Lord for the grace to be always confident of this “mommy” who defends us,
teaches us, helps us grow and [teaches] us to speak the dialect.”