What a joy to hear the pope speak about prayer! it is for me expressed because
it is part of a conversation with Jesus on the Cross. but it is also the expression of mutual love, because it is not about me, but the other! I realise I need to have this new attitude of love, turned towards the other! What a gift!
The Pope's homily focused
on the day's Gospel reading, in which Jesus says, “[I]f you ask the Father any
thing in my name, he will give it you.” Discussing Jesus’ words, Pope Francis
said, “There's something new here, something that changes: it is a novelty in
prayer. The Father will give us everything, but always in the name of Jesus.”
The Lord ascends to the Father, enters “the heavenly Sanctuary,” opens doors
and leaves them open because “He Himself is the door,” and “intercedes for us,”
as priest, even, “until the end of the world”:
He prays for us before the
Father. I always liked that. Jesus, in His resurrection, had a beautiful body:
the cuts of the scourging and the crown of thorns are gone, all of them. His
bruises from the beatings are healed and gone. But He wanted always to keep His
wounds [in His hands, His feet and His side], for those wounds are precisely
His prayer of intercession to the Father. [It is as if Jesus were saying,] ‘But
... look,’ ... this person is asking you this thing in My name, look.’ This is
the novelty that Jesus announces to us. He tells us this new thing: to trust in
His passion, to trust in His victory over death, to trust in His wounds. He is
the priest and this is the sacrifice: his wounds - and this gives us
confidence, gives us courage to pray.”
The Pope noted the many
times that we get bored in prayer, adding
that prayer is not asking for this or that, but it is “the intercession of
Jesus, who before the Father bares His wounds for the Father to see:
“Prayer to the Father in
the name of Jesus brings us out of ourselves. The prayer that bores us is
always within ourselves, as a thought that comes and goes. But true prayer is
the turning out of ourselves [and] to the Father in the name of Jesus: [true
prayer] is an exodus from ourselves.”
Pope Francis goes on to ask
how we can “recognize the wounds of Jesus in heaven,” and, “where the school
is,” at which one learns to recognize the wounds of Jesus, these wounds of
priestly intercession? Pope Francs said that there there is another exodus out
of ourselves, and toward the wounds of our brothers, our brothers and our
sisters in need:
“If we are not able to move
out of ourselves and toward our brother in need, to the sick, the ignorant, the
poor, the exploited – if we are not able to accomplish this exodus from
ourselves, and towards those wounds, we shall never learn that freedom, which
carries us through that other exodus from ourselves, and toward the wounds of
Jesus. There are two exits from ourselves: one to the wounds of Jesus, the
other to the wounds of our brothers and sisters. And this is the way that Jesus
wants [there to be] in our prayer.”
“This,” concluded Pope
Francis, “is the new way to pray: with the confidence, the courage that allows
us to know that Jesus is before the Father, showing the Father His wounds, but
also with the humility of those who go to learn to recognize, to find the
wounds of Jesus in his needy brothers and sisters,” who, “carry the cross and
still have not won, as Jesus has.”
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