Pope: from the cross Christ asks us for eyes and hearts for today's abandoned people
After returning from the hospital Francis presided over the long Palm Sunday liturgy in St. Peter's Square. Among the "abandoned Christs" of our time are the people whom exploitation and poverty dump at the crossroads of our streets, but also "the unborn children and the elderly left alone." A prayer and an olive branch symbolizing Christ's peace for the tormented people of Ukraine.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Jesus forsaken on the cross "asks us to have eyes and hearts" for the "abandoned Christians" of today: Those whom exploitation and poverty dump at the crossroads of our streets, but also the more invisible ones like "unborn children or the elderly left alone," they are the ones Pope Francis invited us to look as we begin this Holy Week.
After returning to the Vatican yesterday morning from his stay at Gemelli Hospital, the pontiff regularly presided over the long Palm Sunday liturgy this morning from St. Peter's Square, assisted by Card. Leonardo Sandri, sub-dean of the Sacred College and prefect emeritus of the dicastery of the Eastern Churches.
At the end of the rite - after thanking the many people who have intensified their prayers for him in recent days - Francis drove his car around the square at length, greeting the approximately 60,000 Romans and pilgrims present. At the beginning of the liturgy her also, as usual, blessed the olive branches from the obelisk then carried out the short procession on board the pope-mobile.
In his homily - commenting on the passion narrated by Matthew proposed in today's liturgy - the pope dwelt precisely on Jesus' question on the cross, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?"
"In the most tragic hour," he commented, "Jesus experiences abandonment by God. Never before had he called the Father by the generic name of God. In order to convey to us the pathos of this, the Gospel also uses the phrase in Aramaic: it is the only one, among those said by Jesus on the cross, that reaches us in the original language. He perceives a closed heaven, he experiences the bitter frontier of living, the shipwreck of existence, the collapse of all certainty: he cries out the why of whys."
"The verb 'to forsake,'" he added, "is strong in the Bible; it appears in moments of extreme pain: in failed loves, rejected and betrayed; in rejected and aborted children; in situations of repudiation, widowhood and orphanhood; in exhausted marriages, in exclusions that deprive social ties, in the oppression of injustice and the loneliness of illness: in short, in the most drastic lacerations of bonds. Christ bore this on the cross, burdening himself with the sin of the world."
But the important fact is why he experiences all this: "Brother, sister," Francis said, addressing the faithful directly, "he did it for me, for you, so that when I, you or anyone else sees himself with his or her back against the wall, lost in a dead end, sunk into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into the vortex of 'why,' there may be hope. This is not the end, for Jesus has been there and is now there with you. You are there, Jesus; in my failures you are with me; when I feel wrong and lost, when I can't take it anymore, you are there, you are with me."
In abandonment Jesus entrusts himself. "Not only that: in abandonment he continues to love his own who had left him alone and forgives his crucifiers. Brothers and sisters, such love, all for us, to the end, can transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, capable of pity, tenderness, compassion. Christ forsaken moves us to seek him and love him in the abandoned. For in them there are not only those in need, but there is He, Jesus forsaken, the One who saved us by descending to the depths of our human condition."
Hence the invitation to care for the brothers and sisters who most resemble Him, the many "abandoned Christians" of today. "I think of that so-called 'homeless' man, a German, who died under the colonnade, alone, abandoned," he recalled.
"There are whole peoples exploited and left to themselves; there are poor people who live at the crossroads of our streets and whose gaze we do not have the courage to meet; migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; rejected prisoners, people catalogued as problems. But there are also so many invisible, hidden abandoned Christians who are discarded with white gloves: unborn children, the elderly left alone, the sick who are not visited, the ignored disabled, the young people who feel a great emptiness inside without anyone really listening to their cry of pain. And they find no other way but suicide. The abandoned of today. The Christians of today."
For the "disciples of the Forsaken," no one can be left to himself: "Let us remember," the pope admonished, "the rejected and excluded are living icons of Christ, they remind us of his crazy love, his abandonment that saves us from all loneliness and desolation. Let us ask this grace today: to know how to love Jesus forsaken and to know how to love Jesus in every forsaken person."
In this sense - at the end of the celebration, before the Angelus prayer - Francis once again turned his gaze to the people affected by war. He did so by addressing his blessing to the Caravan of Peace that in recent days has set out from Italy for Ukraine, on the initiative of various associations to bring basic necessities and olive branches, a symbol of Christ's peace. "We join this gesture with prayer," the pope concluded, "which will become ever more intense during the days of Holy Week."
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