Pope: 'Look to the crucifix' especially when we are tired of life’s journey
"Such are the illusions the devil proposes. Once we begin to feel the heat of the day on the journey of conversion, the devil makes us see everything we left behind in a beautiful light, when you have not yet reached the promise of the Lord. It is a bit like the journey of Lent ":" there are always trials and the Lord’s consolation".
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "Look to the crucifix". Especially in the moment "when we are tired of life’s journey " and do not to speak ill of God because it is poison to the soul, said Pope Francis at Mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta. He was commenting on the First Reading (Nm 21: 4-9), which tells of the desolation experienced by the people of Israel in the desert and the episode of the snakes.
The people had been hungry and God had answered with manna and then with quail, they were thirsty and God had given them water. Then, near the promised land, some of them had expressed scepticism because the scouts sent out by Moses had said that it was rich in fruit and animals but inhabited by a tall and strong, well-armed people: they were afraid of being killed. And therefore they expressed the reasons for the danger of going there. "They looked to their own strength and forgot the strength of the Lord who had freed them from 400 years of slavery."
"The people could not bear the journey" as when people who start "a life to follow the Lord, to be close to the Lord" at some point encounter trials that seem insurmountable. When one says, "enough!", "I am stopping and going back." And we think with regret of the past: "how much meat, how many onions, how many beautiful things we ate there." It's a "sick memory" because that was the food of slavery in Egypt. " Such are the illusions the devil proposes. Once we begin to feel the heat of the day on the journey of conversion, the devil makes us see everything we left behind in a beautiful light, when you have not yet reached the promise of the Lord. It is a bit like the journey of Lent: there are always trials and the Lord’s consolation, there is the manna, there is the water, there are the birds that feed us ... that meal was better, but do not forget that you ate it at the table of slavery! "
This experience, underlined the Pope, happens to everyone when we want to follow the Lord but we get tired. What is perhaps worse is that the people have despaired of God and "to talk ill of God is to poison the soul". Perhaps some think that God is not helping them or that there is so much hardship. They feel "a depressed, poisoned at heart ". And the snakes, which bite the people as narrated in the First Reading, are really "the symbol of poisoning", of the lack of constancy in following the path of the Lord.
Moses, then, at the invitation of the Lord, makes a bronze serpent and puts it on a pole. This snake, which healed all those who had been attacked by the serpents for having disparaged of God, "was prophetic: it was the figure of Christ on the cross". "Here is the key to our salvation, the key to our patience in the journey of life, the key to overcoming our deserts: to look at the crucifix. Look at the crucified Christ. 'And what should I do, Father?' - 'Look at him. Look at the sores. Enter the wounds. " We have been healed by those wounds. Do you feel poisoned, do you feel sad, do you feel that your life is going nowhere, is it full of difficulties and even of sickness? Look at them". Look at those moments, "the ugly crucifix, that is the reality" because "the artists have made beautiful, artistic crucifixes", some of gold and precious stones. And this "is not always worldliness" because it means "the glory of the cross, the glory of the Resurrection". "But when you feel like this, look at this: before the glory".
Francis then remembered when he was a child with his grandmother on Good Friday: the torchlight procession was carried out in the parish and the marble Christ, of natural dimensions, was brought forward. And when he arrived, Grandma made us kneel: "Look at him well, she would say, but tomorrow he will Rise!" In fact, at that time, before the liturgical reform of Pius XII, the Resurrection was celebrated on Saturday morning, not on Sunday. And then, my grandmother, on Saturday morning, when we heard the bells of the Resurrection, her eyes washed by tears, would see the glory of Christ. "Teach your children to look at the crucifix and glory of Christ. We too, in bad times, in difficult moments, poisoned a bit 'by having said harboured some disappointment against God in our heart, we should look at the wounds. Christ lifted up like a snake: because he became a serpent, he destroyed everything to conquer 'the evil snake. May the Word of God teach us this path today: look at the crucifix. Above all in the moment in which, like the people of God, we get tired of life’s journey ".
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