Pope at Mass: true prayer takes us out of ourselves
(Vatican Radio) True prayer brings us out of ourselves: it opens us to the Father
and to the neediest of our brothers and sisters. This was a central part of Pope Francis’
message to the faithful gathered for Mass on Saturday morning in the chapel of the
Domus Sanctae Marthae residence at the Vatican, with agents of the Vatican Gendarmerie
and a group of Argentine journalists with their families in attendance.
The
Pope's homily focused on the day's Gospel reading, in which Jesus says, “[I]f you
ask the Father any thing in my name, he will give it you.” Discussing Jesus’ words,
Pope Francis said, “There's something new here, something that changes: it is a novelty
in prayer. The Father will give us everything, but always in the name of Jesus.” The
Lord ascends to the Father, enters “the heavenly Sanctuary,” opens doors and leaves
them open because “He Himself is the door,” and “intercedes for us,” as priest, even,
“until the end of the world”:
He prays for us before the Father. I always liked
that. Jesus, in His resurrection, had a beautiful body: the cuts of the scourging
and the crown of thorns are gone, all of them. His bruises from the beatings are healed
and gone. But He wanted always to keep His wounds [in His hands, His feet and His
side], for those wounds are precisely His prayer of intercession to the Father. [It
is as if Jesus were saying,] ‘But ... look,’ ... this person is asking you this thing
in My name, look.’ This is the novelty that Jesus announces to us. He tells us this
new thing: to trust in His passion, to trust in His victory over death, to trust in
His wounds. He is the priest and this is the sacrifice: his wounds - and this gives
us confidence, gives us courage to pray.”
The Pope noted the many times that
we get bored in prayer, adding that prayer is not asking for this or that, but it
is “the intercession of Jesus, who before the Father bares His wounds for the Father
to see:
“Prayer to the Father in the name of Jesus brings us out of ourselves.
The prayer that bores us is always within ourselves, as a thought that comes and goes.
But true prayer is the turning out of ourselves [and] to the Father in the name of
Jesus: [true prayer] is an exodus from ourselves.”
Pope Francis goes on to
ask how we can “recognize the wounds of Jesus in heaven,” and, “where the school is,”
at which one learns to recognize the wounds of Jesus, these wounds of priestly intercession?
Pope Francs said that there there is another exodus out of ourselves, and toward the
wounds of our brothers, our brothers and our sisters in need:
“If we are not
able to move out of ourselves and toward our brother in need, to the sick, the ignorant,
the poor, the exploited – if we are not able to accomplish this exodus from ourselves,
and towards those wounds, we shall never learn that freedom, which carries us through
that other exodus from ourselves, and toward the wounds of Jesus. There are two exits
from ourselves: one to the wounds of Jesus, the other to the wounds of our brothers
and sisters. And this is the way that Jesus wants [there to be] in our prayer.”
“This,”
concluded Pope Francis, “is the new way to pray: with the confidence, the courage
that allows us to know that Jesus is before the Father, showing the Father His wounds,
but also with the humility of those who go to learn to recognize, to find the wounds
of Jesus in his needy brothers and sisters,” who, “carry the cross and still have
not won, as Jesus has.”