1681 words, 9 minute read.
Continuing with my reading of Pope Leo’s homilies and speeches, I would here like to share my favorite passages from the last week or so. To my mind they continue to demonstrate a close alignment with Pope Francis’ vision of a Church that embraces intimacy with Jesus and closeness to the world as it is today. What is also emerging ever more clearly is a sense of careful, deep thinking, coupled with boldness and an emphasis on friendship and peace.
Let’s start by taking a look at Pope Leo’s first General Audience on 28th May during which he spoke beautifully about the Good Samaritan, emphasizing the compassionate, human help that he offered the wounded man:
“[L]ife is made up of encounters, and in these encounters, we emerge for what we are. We find ourselves in front of others, faced with their fragility and weakness, and we can decide what to do: to take care of them or pretend nothing is wrong. […]
It is indeed haste, so present in our lives, that very often prevents us from feeling compassion. Those who think that their own journey must take precedence are not willing to stop for another.
But here comes someone who is actually able to stop: he is a Samaritan, hence a person belonging to a despised people (cf. 2 Kings 17). In his case, the text does not specify the direction, but only says that he was travelling. Religiosity does not enter into this. This Samaritan simply stops because he is a man faced with another man in need of help.
[… I]f you want to help someone, you cannot think of keeping your distance, you have to get involved, get dirty, perhaps be contaminated. […]
Dear brothers and sisters, when will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion.”
A couple of days later, Pope Leo then gave some powerful advice to candidates for the priesthood before ordaining them. Even though they are addressed at future priests, the call to step out of ourselves, to make space for others and to not possessing others applies to everyone:
“To belong to God – to be servants of God, the people of God – ties us to the earth: not to an ideal world, but to the real one. Like Jesus, it is flesh-and-blood people whom the Father places along your path. To them, consecrate yourselves, without separating from them, without isolating yourselves, without turning the gift you have received into a kind of privilege. Pope Francis has warned us many times about this, because self-referentiality extinguishes the fire of the missionary spirit.
The Church is by its very nature outward-looking, just as outward-looking are the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In every Eucharist, you will make His words your own: it is ‘for you and for all.’ No one has ever seen God. He turned to us, He went out of Himself. The Son became His exegesis, His living narrative. And He gave us the power to become children of God. Let us not seek – let us not desire – any other power!
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Paul passes on to them the secret of every mission: ‘The Holy Spirit has made you guardians’ (Acts 20:28). Not masters, but guardians. The mission belongs to Jesus. He is Risen, therefore He is alive and goes before us. None of us is called to replace Him. The day of the Ascension teaches us to recognize His invisible presence. He trusts us, He makes room for us; He even went so far as to say: ‘It is better for you that I go’ (John 16:7). We bishops, dear ordinands, by involving you in the mission today, are also making room for you. And you, in turn, make room for the faithful and for every creature, to whom the Risen One is close and in whom He loves to visit us and surprise us. The people of God are more numerous than what we can see. Let us not set boundaries on them.”
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‘For the love of Christ urges us on,’ dear brothers and sisters! It is a possession that sets us free and enables us not to possess anyone. To liberate, not to possess. We belong to God: there is no greater wealth to treasure and to share. It is the only wealth that multiplies when shared. We want to bring it together into the world that God so loved that He gave His only Son (cf. John 3:16).”
Yesterday, Pope Leo then shared a clear picture of what Jesus means by speaking about unity in John 17:20 – a unity that does not homogenize, but that draws us into the inner life of God, who loves “loves us as he loves himself”:
Christ prays that we may “all be one” (v. 21). This is the greatest good that we can desire, for this universal union brings about among his creatures the eternal communion of love that is God himself: the Father who gives life, the Son who receives it and the Spirit who shares it.
The Lord does not want us, in this unity, to be a nameless and faceless crowd. He wants us to be one: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (v. 21). The unity for which Jesus prays is thus a communion grounded in the same love with which God loves, which brings life and salvation into the world. As such, it is firstly a gift that Jesus comes to bring. From his human heart, the Son of God prays to the Father in these words: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (v. 23).
Let us listen with amazement to these words. Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves himself. The Father does not love us any less than he loves his only-begotten Son. In other words, with an infinite love. God does not love less, because he loves first, from the very beginning! Christ himself bears witness to this when he says to the Father: “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). And so it is: in his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another.
Today he then addressed the following words to the participants of a seminar organized by the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life that is suffuses by the spirit of Amoris Lætitia:
What great need there is to promote an encounter with God, whose tender love values and loves the story of every person! It is not a matter of giving hasty answers to difficult questions, but of drawing close to people, listening to them, and trying to understand together with them how to face their difficulties. And this requires a readiness to be open, when necessary, to new ways of seeing things and different ways of acting, for each generation is different and has its own challenges, dreams and questions. Yet amid all these changes, Jesus Christ remains “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). Consequently, if we want to help families experience joyful paths of communion and be seeds of faith for one another, we must first cultivate and renew our own identity as believers.
Finally, Pope Leo also spoke during a commemoration of Blessed Iuliu Hossu, a Romanian bishop who saved the lives of many Jews during the Nazi persecution and who was later himself persecuted by the Communists:
We are meeting today […] to commemorate an Apostle of Hope: Blessed Iuliu Hossu, the Greek-Catholic Bishop of Cluj-Gherla and a martyr for the faith during the Communist persecution in Romania. Today, in a certain sense, he enters [the Sistine] Chapel, having been created a Cardinal in pectore by Saint Paul VI on 28 April 1969, while imprisoned for his fidelity to the Church of Rome.
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At enormous risk to himself and to the Greek-Catholic Church, Blessed Hossu undertook extensive activities on behalf of the Jews aimed at preventing their deportation. In the spring of 1944, as preparations were being made in Cluj-Napoca (in Hungarian Kolozsvár) and other cities in Transylvania, to establish ghettos for the Jews, he mobilized the Greek-Catholic clergy and faithful through a pastoral letter published on 2 April 1944. […] In that letter, he launched a vibrant and deeply human appeal. “Our plea”, he wrote, “is addressed to all of you, venerable brothers and beloved children, to help the Jews not only with your thoughts, but also with your sacrifice, knowing that there is no act more noble to be carried out today than providing Christian and Romanian assistance, born of ardent human charity. Our first concern in the present moment must be this work of relief.” According to the personal testimony of [Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger,] the former Chief Rabbi [of the Jewish community of Cluj-Napoca], Cardinal Hossu helped save the lives of thousands of Jews in northern Transylvania between 1940 and 1944.
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[H]e was beatified by Pope Francis on 2 June 2019 in Blaj. In the homily on that occasion, the Pope quoted a phrase of the Cardinal that summed up his entire life: “God has sent us into this darkness of suffering in order to offer forgiveness and to pray for the conversion of all.”
These words embody the spirit of the martyrs: an unshakeable faith in God, devoid of hatred and coupled with a spirit of mercy that turns suffering into love for one’s persecutor. Even now, those words remain as a prophetic invitation to overcome hatred through forgiveness and to live one’s faith with dignity and courage.
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