Pope: God is not afraid to lower Himself and be last of all. Prayer for Christians in the Middle East
Castel Gandolfo
(AsiaNews) - "God is not afraid to lower Himself and become the last of all",
unlike us men, "who although small, aspire to look great, to be the
first." In
his reflection before the Angelus with pilgrims gathered in the courtyard of
the Apostolic Palace, Benedict XVI highlighted the profound difference between
God and man. At
the end of the Marian prayer, the Pope recalled his visit to Lebanon and asked
everyone to continue to pray for peace in the Middle East.
"A
key point in which God and man are different - said the Pope - is pride: there is no pride in God, because He is totally
complete and gives love and life to us men,
in whom, however, pride is deeply rooted and requires constant vigilance and
purification. "
"The
logic of God - he said - is always "other" to our own, as revealed by
God through the prophet Isaiah:" My thoughts are not your thoughts, / your
ways are not my ways "(Isaiah 55.8).
For this, following the Lord always requires a profound conversion in man, a
change in thinking and living, it requires us to open our hearts to be
enlightened and to be inwardly transformed. "
The
Pope's reflections were inspired by the Gospel of today's liturgy (Mark 9:
30-37), in which the Jesus' announces his impending death and resurrection",
but the disciples "did not understand these words and they were afraid
to question him "(v. 32)."
"Reading
this part of Mark's account - said
Benedict XVI - it is clear that between Jesus and the disciples there is a deep
inner distance, they are, so to speak, on two different wavelengths, so that
the discourses of the Master are
not understood, or only superficially. The Apostle Peter, immediately after
declaring his faith in Jesus, scolds him because he predicted that he would be
rejected and killed. After the second announcement of the Passion, the
disciples discuss who among them is the greatest (cf. Mk 9:34), and after the
third, James and John ask Jesus to be able to sit on his right and his left,
when it is in glory (cf. Mk 10.35 -40).
But there are several other signs of this distance, for example, the disciples
fail to heal an epileptic boy, then Jesus heals him with the power of prayer
(cf. Mk 9.14 to 29), or when the children come to
Jesus, the disciples rebuke them, and Jesus, indignant, welcomes them, and says
that only those who are like them can enter the Kingdom of God (cf. Mk
10:13-16). "
In
contrast to all of us, the Pope concluded, "The Virgin Mary is
perfectly" in tune "with God: Let us invoke her with confidence, so that
she teaches us to follow Jesus faithfully on the path of love and
humility."
After
the Angelus, the Pope greeted those present in various languages. Welcoming
the French-speaking pilgrims, he thanked them "with all my heart for your
prayers that accompanied the beautiful success of my apostolic visit to Lebanon
and by extension the whole of the Middle East. Continue to pray for Christians
in the Middle East, for peace and for peaceful dialogue between religions. "
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