Pope: Mary leads us to say "no" to excluding peoples and persons
Mary’s presence leads " to reconciliation," said Francis on the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. However, "The society we are building for our children is increasingly marked by the signs of division and fragmentation, leaving many people out, especially those who find it difficult to get the minimum necessary to lead a dignified life."
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Pope Francis celebrated Mass Monday evening on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas. Cardinals, bishops, priests and the flags of Latin American countries were present in St Peter’s Basilica to greet the "icon of the disciple, of the believing and prayerful woman who knows how to accompany and encourage our faith and our hope in the different stages that we have to go through."
In today’s affluent society, which excludes many people, “especially those who find it difficult to get the minimum necessary to lead a dignified life”, Mary’s presence “leads us to reconciliation”, hers is “a ‘yes’ to life and ‘no’ to all kinds of indifference, exclusion, or the rejection of peoples and persons.”
On the day of the liturgical celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Francis noted that Mary is the woman who “fights against the society of mistrust and blindness, the society of apathy and dispersion; a woman who fights to strengthen the joy of the Gospel, who fights to give ‘flesh’ to the Gospel.”
In his homily, pronounced in Spanish, like the entire service, the Holy Father was inspired by the words in the Gospel: " Blessed are you who believed" (Lk. 1:45) with which Elizabeth greeted Mary. These words highlight how “The Gospel scene bears all the dynamism of God’s visit. When God comes to meet us He moves us inwardly, He sets in motion what we are until all our life is transformed into praise and blessing. When God visits us, He leaves us restless, with the healthy restlessness of those who feel they have been invited to proclaim what He lives, and is in the midst of His people. This is what we see in Mary, the first disciple and missionary, the new Ark of the Covenant who, far from remaining in the reserved space of our temples, goes out to visit and accompany with her presence the gestation of John. She did the same in 1531. She ran to Tepeyac to serve and accompany the people that was developing in pain, becoming its Mother and that of all our nations.
From Mary’s faith, “we will certainly have to learn from that strong and helpful faith that characterised and characterises our Mother, learning from this faith that knows how to get inside history so as to be the salt and light in our lives and society.
“The society we are building for our children is increasingly marked by the signs of division and fragmentation, leaving many people out, especially those who find it difficult to get the minimum necessary to lead a dignified life. Such a society likes to boast about its scientific and technological progress, but it has become blind and insensitive to the thousands of faces that are there along the way, excluded by the blind pride of the few. Such a society ends up establishing a culture of disillusionment, disenchantment and frustration in many of our brothers and sisters, and even anguish in many others who experience difficulties in order not to be left out of the race.
“It seems that, without realising, we have become used to living in a society of distrust, with all that this presupposes for our present and especially for our future, distrust that gradually engenders a state of apathy and dispersal.
“How difficult it is to boast of our society of wellbeing when we see that our dear American continent has become used to the sight of thousands and thousands of children and young people on the streets, begging and sleeping in railway stations, in tube stations or wherever they find a place. Children and young people exploited in illegal work or driven to seeking a few coins at intersections, cleaning the windshields of our cars . . . who feel that the ‘train of life’ has no place for them. How many families are scarred by the suffering of seeing their children victimised by merchants of death. How hard it is to see the way we have normalised the exclusion of our elderly, leaving them to live in solitude, simply because they are not productive, or see, as the bishops in Aparecida put it so well, “the precarious situation that affects the dignity of many women. Some, since childhood and adolescence, are subject to many forms of violence inside and outside the home”. These situations can paralyse us, and can cast doubt on our faith and especially our hope, our way of looking at and facing the future.
“Faced with all these situations, we must say with Elizabeth, “Blessed are you who believed”, and learn from such strong and helpful faith that characterised and characterises our Mother.
“Celebrating Mary is, first and foremost, saluting the memory of the mother, remembering that we are not and never will be an orphaned people. We have a Mother! And where the mother is, there is always the presence and flavour of home. Where the mother is, siblings might fight but the sense of unity will always prevail. Where the mother is, the struggle for brotherhood shall not fail. I have always been moved to see, in different Latin American peoples, mothers who fight, often alone, to bring up their children. Thus is Mary with us, with her children: a woman who fights against the society of mistrust and blindness, the society of apathy and dispersion, a woman who fights to strengthen the joy of the Gospel, who fights to give ‘flesh’ to the Gospel.
“To look at the Guadalupana is to remember that the Lord’s visit always comes through those who manage to make His Word ‘flesh”, who seek to embody God’s life in themselves, becoming living signs of His mercy.
“To celebrate Mary’s memory is to assert against all odds that ‘In the heart and life of our peoples there beats a strong sense of hope, despite living conditions that seem to obscure all hope.’”
“Mary, because she believed, she loved; because she is the handmaid of the Lord and the servant of her brothers. Celebrating the memory of Mary is to celebrate that we, like her, are invited to go out and meet others with the same gaze, with the same mercy within, with their same gestures. To contemplate her is to feel the strong invitation to imitate her faith. Her presence leads us to reconciliation, giving us the strength to create bonds in our blessed Latin American land, saying “yes” to life and “no” to all kinds of indifference, exclusion, or the rejection of peoples and persons.
“Let us not be afraid to go out and look upon others with the same gaze. A gaze that makes us brothers. We do so because, like Juan Diego, we know that our mother is here, we know that we are under her shadow and her protection, which is the source of our joy, and that we are in the cross of her arms.”
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