"How often do we see this reality in bad people, in people who do evil, and seem to do well in life: they are happy, they have everything they want, they want for nothing. Why Lord?". The answer is in the Psalm of the day, which proclaims "blessed" he "who does not enter the counsel of the wicked" and who "finds joy" in the "law of the Lord."

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - God does not abandon the righteous, but the wicked "in the Book of God's memory, have no name”, was Pope Francis reflection during the Mass celebrated this morning at Casa Santa Marta, responding to the question of why sometimes good things happen to bad people while good people suffer.

The Pope was inspired by the reading of the prophet Malachi, where he asks "to what advantage have we kept" the commandments of God, while  the "proud" "doing evil, multiply , and even though they offend God, remain unpunished? ".

There is a courageous mother, husband, three children, aged under 40 and a tumor "of the bad" that the nail bed. "Why?". And an elderly woman, person with prayer in the heart and with a son murdered by the Mafia. "Why?".

"How often  - said Francis - do we see this reality in bad people, in people who do evil, and seem to do well in life: they are happy, they have everything they want, they want for nothing. Why Lord? This is one of the many questions we have. Why does this brazen evildoer who cares nothing for God nor for neighbor, who is an unjust person – even mean – and things go well in his whole life, he has everything he wants, while we, who want to do good, have so many problems?".

Pope Francis discovered the answer in the responsorial Psalm – Psalm 1 – which proclaims, “Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked Nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, But delights in the law of the LORD.” Pope Francis went on to say: “Now we do not see the fruits of this suffering people, this people carrying the cross, as on that  Good Friday and Holy Saturday the fruits of the crucified Son of God, the fruits of His sufferings were yet to be seen: and whatever He does, turns out well; and what the Psalm says the wicked, of those for whom we think everything is going fine? ‘Not so the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away. For the LORD watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes".

This ruin, this scattering and oblivion, which is the end of the wicked, is one Pope Francis found dramatically and emphatically stressed in the Gospel parable of Lazarus – the symbol of misery with no escape, to whom the rich reveler refused even the scraps from his table: “It is curious: that [rich] man’s name is never spoken. He is just an adjective: he is a rich man (It. ricco, Gr. πλούσιος). Of the wicked, in God’s record book, there is no name: he is an evil one, a con man, a pimp ... They have no name. They only have adjectives. All those, who try to go on the way of the Lord, will rather be with His Son, who has the name: Jesus Saviour. It is a name that is difficult to understand, inexplicable for the trial of the Cross and for all that He suffered for us.”

• VATICAN
• POPE
• FRANCIS
• MASS
• CASA
• SANTA
• MARTA