(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated Holy Mass on Sunday near the Study Centre of Ecatepec, in the suburbs of Mexico City.
In his homily for the Mass, the Holy Father spoke about three temptations of Christ, which are also temptations for Christians: the temptation to wealth, to vanity, and to pride. The penitential season of Lent, he said, is an invitation to conversion, to turn ourselves to Christ, who is waiting for us and wants to heal our hearts of all that tears us down.
Below, please find the official translation of the prepared text of Pope Francis’ homily for Mass for the First Sunday of Lent:
Homily of Pope Francis
Holy Mass at the Ecatepec Study Centre
Sunday 14 February 2016
Last Wednesday we began the liturgical season of Lent, during which the Church invites us to prepare ourselves to celebrate the great feast of Easter. This is a special time for recalling the gift of our baptism, when we became children of God. The Church invites us to renew the gift she has given us, to not let this gift lie dormant as if it were something from the past or locked away in some “memory chest”. Lent is a good time to recover the joy and hope that make us feel beloved sons and daughters of the Father. The Father who waits for us in order to cast off our garments of exhaustion, of apathy, of mistrust, and so clothe us with the dignity which only a true father or mother knows how to give their children, with the garments born of tenderness and love.
Our Father, he is the Father of a great family; he is our Father. He knows that he has a unique love, but he does not know how to bear or raise an “only child”. He is the God of the home, of brotherhood, of bread broken and shared. He is the God who is “Our Father”, not “my father” or “your stepfather”.
God’s dream makes its home and lives in each one of us so that at every Easter, in every Eucharist we celebrate, we may be the children of God. It is a dream which so many of our brothers and sisters have had through history. A dream witnessed to by the blood of so many martyrs, both from long ago and from now.
Lent is a time of conversion, of daily experiencing in our lives of how this dream is continually threatened by the father of lies, by the one who tries to separate us, making a divided and fractious society. A society of the few, and for the few. How often we experience in our own lives, or in our own families, among our friends or neighbours, the pain which arises when the dignity we carry within is not recognized. How many times have we had to cry and regret on realizing that we have not acknowledged this dignity in others. How often – and it pains me to say it – have we been blind and impervious in failing to recognize our own and others’ dignity.
Lent is a time for reconsidering our feelings, for letting our eyes be opened to the frequent injustices which stand in direct opposition to the dream and the plan of God. It is a time to unmask three great temptations that wear down and fracture the image which God wanted to form in us:
There are three temptations of Christ… three temptations for the Christian, which seek to destroy what we have been called to be; three temptations which try to corrode us and tear us down.
Wealth: seizing hold of goods destined for all, and using them only for “my own people”. That is, taking the “bread” based on the toil of others, or even at the expense of their very lives. That wealth which tastes of pain, bitterness and suffering. This is the bread that a corrupt family or society gives its own children.
Vanity: the pursuit of prestige based on continuous, relentless exclusion of those who “are not like me”. The futile chasing of those five minutes of fame which do not forgive the “reputation” of others. “Making firewood from a felled tree” gives way to the third temptation:
Pride: or rather, putting oneself on a higher level than one truly is on, feeling that one does not share the life of “mere mortals”, and yet being one who prays every day: “I thank you Lord that you have not made me like those others…”.
Three temptations of Christ… Three temptations which the Christian is faced with daily. Three temptations which seek to corrode, destroy and extinguish the joy and freshness of the Gospel. Three temptations which lock us into a cycle of destruction and sin.
And so it is worth asking ourselves:
To what degree are we aware of these temptations in our lives, in our very selves?
How much have we become accustomed to a lifestyle where we think that our source and life force lies only in wealth?
To what point do we feel that caring about others, our concern and work for bread, for the good name and dignity of others, are wellsprings of happiness and hope?
We have chosen Jesus, not the evil one; we want to follow in his footsteps, even though we know that this is not easy. We know what it means to be seduced by money, fame and power. For this reason, the Church gives us the gift of this Lenten season, invites us to conversion, offering but one certainty: he is waiting for us and wants to heal our hearts of all that tears us down. He is the God who has a name: Mercy. His name is our wealth, his name is what makes us famous, his name is our power and in his name we say once more with the Psalm: “You are my God and in you I trust”. Let us repeat these words together: “You are my God and in you I trust”.
In this Eucharist, may the Holy Spirit renew in us the certainty that his name is Mercy, and may he let us experience each day that “the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus…”, knowing that “with Christ and in Christ joy is constantly born anew” (cf. Evangelii Gaudium , 1).
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) For the second time in two nights, Pope Francis greeted crowds outside the Apostolic Nunciature in Mexico City on Saturday.
After returning to the residence after his busy Saturday, the Holy Father heard the crowds and came back outside.
He asked if they people were tired, and they shouted “No!”
“We could go until 4 a.m? But that could be a little long,” Pope Francis said.
The Holy Father said he thought someone had a problem of the heart, and asked the crowd to pray to the Virgin Mary.
“The Virgin is a mother, and is good…a few might say she is not like a mother-in-law,” he joked.
Pope Francis then led crowd in a Hail Mary, and encouraged them to take their problems to God through Our Lady, before returning to the residence for the night.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) One highlight of Pope Francis’ first full day in Mexico on Saturday was Holy Mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
The shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe which is home to the Basilica is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world.
It is particularly important to the first Latin American Pope who had asked to pray in private before the image of “Our Lady of Guadalupe ” in the “camarin”, a sort of a secret room right behind the altar of the Basilica.
Vatican Radio’s Veronica Scarisbrick had a word with Fr Federico Lombardi, Director of the Vatican Press Office, at the end of an eventful day.
Fr Lombardi agrees that the visit to the Shrine bore special significance for Pope Francis…
Listen to the report:
Fr Lombardi says that being at the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe represented the most intense spiritual moment of Pope Francis’ first full day in Mexico.
“It was long-awaited because the Pope had said he was coming as a pilgrim to this Shrine to see and to be seen by the Virgin of Guadalupe” he says.
He explains that when we contemplate this image we receive from her a profound spiritual message of proximity, of encouragement “like – he says – that experienced by St. Juan Diego”.
Fr Lombardi points out that we too have the hope that the Virgin is looking to us and gives the profound sense of her love and proximity, of God’s love and of the coming of Jesus.
“In this sense there is a dialogue and during those 20 minutes in the Basilica we were able to participate with profound emotion in this dialogue between the Pope and the Virgin” he says.
The Pope, Fr Lombardi concludes, was praying not only for himself but in particular for the people of Mexico and for the entire humankind.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis heads to the rough, crime-ridden neighborhood of Ecatepec – part of Mexico City’s suburbs – to celebrate Mass with people “on the periphery” on Sunday. The day will be in stark contrast to Saturday, when the Pope met Mexican government and civic authorities at the National Palace and later, bishops, at the grandiose Cathedral of the Assumption, and celebrated Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe . Our correspondent Veronica Scarisbrick, is in Mexico with the Pope. She takes a look at Ecatepec, where Pope Francis celebrates an outdoor Mass Sunday : Listen to Veronica Scarisbrick’s report, “Where people fear to tread” :
At the time of the Aztec Empire, ‘Ecatepec de Morelos’ was an alternative name to ‘Quetzalcoatl’ or the God of the moon. It comes from the Nahunta language and means “windy hill”. Situated northeast of Mexico City, it’s still on a windy hill but it no longer bears the majesty it held at the time of the Aztecs. It’s now an ugly sprawl of a shanty town littered with rubbish in one of Mexico’s ‘barrio bravo’. An expression meaning a lawless neighbourhood where organized crime, pollution and poverty reign and where most people fear to tread. But not Pope Francis. This is exactly the kind of place he loves to visit, in a special way during this Year of Mercy. Part of the ‘centuriòn de la pobreza’, a poverty belt surrounding Mexico City,the neighborhood lies in stark contrast to the glamour of downtown Mexico City where those ‘Ecapatans’ who have a job commute to. Pope Francis has done his homework; he has priests on the ground and knows what goes on here. He knows how the once clear canal that flows through the area, the ‘Rio de los Remedios’ has a fetid aura and has become a dumping place for corpses. In 2014 alone drainage work uncovered hundreds of human bones and the remains of five men and sixteen young women. For women are targeted in a special way, raped or forced into prostitution. And when they don’t consent, they’re disfigured with acid or become part of the army of ‘desaparecidas’ amid the indifference of the police. But it has to be said: with the support of their mothers who make it their mission in life to find out the truth about their daughters. The only institution people can rely on here is the family . As for the boys, they’re recruited by the drug lords at a young age and by the time they turn eighteen become ‘pozoleros:’ those who hide away the corpses, or ‘ sicarios:’ assassins. Ecatapec is not a place for the soft-hearted but it’s the site Pope Francis has chosen to celebrate Holy Mass on the second day of his apostolic journey to Mexico. (from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) At the conclusion of Holy Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe , Pope Francis led the faithful in the Rite of Coronation of the image of the Most Holy Virgin of Guadalupe.
The miraculous image dates back to 1531, when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin . Since that time, the Virgin, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, has been proclaimed Patroness of Mexico, Patroness and Empress of the Americas, and Heavenly Patroness of the Philippines. She is also known as the Protectress of Unborn Children.The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most visited pilgrimmage places in the world, with millions of pilgrims coming each year to venerate the sacred image.
Below, please find the prayer for the Coronation of the Image of the Most Holy Virgin of Guadalupe:
Blessed are you, O Lord,
God of heaven and earth,
who, in your mercy and justice,
cast down the proud,
and exalt the humble.
In the wondrous designs of your providence,
you have offered a perfect model
in the Incarnate Word and in the Virgin Mother:
Your Son, who voluntarily humbled Himself,
even to death on the Cross,
shines in eternal glory
and sits at your right hand
as King of kings and Lord of lords.
And the Virgin, who desired to call herself your handmaid,
who was chosen as Mother of the Redeemer
and true Mother of the living,
and now, lifted up above the choirs of angels,
gloriously reigns beside her Son,
interceding for all men,
the advocate of grace
and queen of mercy.
Look with kindness, O Lord, on these your servants
who, in placing a royal diadem
upon the image of the Mother of your Son,
recognize in your Son the King of the universe,
and invoke, as Queen, the Virgin.
Grant that,
in following their example,
we too might consecrate ourselves to your service,
and make ourselves available to others,
fulfilling the law of charity,
thus triumphing over selfishness,
and in generously giving
we might lead our brothers and sisters to you.
Grant that,
seeking humility on earth,
we might one day be lifted to the heights of heaven,
where you yourself will place
on the heads of your faithful
the crown of life.
Through Christ our Lord.
(from Vatican Radio)…