(Vatican Radio) We are sons of God thanks to Jesus: no one can take away this “identity
card.” That was Pope Francis’ message during Mass on Thursday at the Casa Santa Marta.
The Pope’s homily centred on the Gospel of the healing of a paralytic. In
the beginning of the day’s Gospel, Jesus says to him: “Courage, child, your sins are
forgiven.” Perhaps, the Pope Francis said, this person remained “unsettled” because
he wanted to be physically healed. Then, faced with the criticism of the scribes –
who among themselves had accused him of blasphemy, “because only God can forgive sins”
– Jesus healed his physical condition. In reality, the Pope explained, the healings,
the teaching, the strong words against hypocrisy were “only a sign, a sign of something
more that Jesus was doing,” namely, the forgiveness of sins: In Jesus the world is
reconciled with God. This is “the most profound miracle”:
“This reconciliation
is the re-creation of the world: this is the most profound mission of Jesus. The redemption
of all of us sinners; and Jesus does this not with words, not with gestures, not walking
along the street. No! He does it with His flesh! It is He Himself, God who became
one of us, a human, to heal us from within, [He came] to us sinners.”
Jesus
frees us from sin by making Himself “sin,” taking upon Himself “all the sin” and this,
the Pope said, “is the new creation.” Jesus “comes down from glory, humbles Himself,
even unto death, death on the Cross,” even to the point of crying out: “Father, why
have you abandoned me?” This “is His glory, and this is our salvation”:
“This
is the greatest miracle. And what does Jesus accomplish with this? He make us children,
with the liberty of children. Because of what Jesus has done, we can say ‘Father.’
[If He had not done so] we would never have been able to say this: ‘Father!’ And to
say ‘Father’ with so good and so beautiful an attitude, with liberty! This is the
great miracle of Jesus. We, who were slaves of sin – He has made us all free, He has
healed us at the very core of our existence. We would do well to think about this,
and to think how beautiful it is to be children, and how beautiful this ‘liberty of
children’ is, because the child is in the house, and Jesus has opened the doors of
the house to us . . . Now we are in the house!”
Now, the Pope concluded,
we can understand when Jesus said “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven”:
That
is the root of our courage: I am free, I am a child . . . The Father loves me, and
I love the Father! Let us ask the Lord for the grace to truly understand this work
of His, what God has done in Him: God has reconciled the world to Himself in Christ,
entrusting to us the word of reconciliation and the grace of bearing this word of
reconciliation onward, forcefully, with the liberty of children. We are saved in Jesus
Christ! And no one can take from us this ‘identity card.’ This is how I identify myself:
as a child of God! What a beautiful identity! Civil status: we are free! Amen.
Cardinal
Telesphore Placidus Toppo, the Archbishop of Ranchi in India, concelebrated Mass with
the Holy Father.