At the Angelus, the pontiff remembered the victims and survivors of the devastating earthquake that shook the Syrian and Turkish populations on February 6. A thought also for Ukraine almost a year after the Russian invasion. The suffering caused by poverty, lack of freedom and environmental devastation. The “extraordinary” and “disproportionate” love of Jesus that goes beyond all calculation.
Vatican City () – The “extraordinary and disproportionate” love of Jesus asks all of us to “let ourselves be touched” by the situations of those who are “tried” by suffering, especially “by Syria and Turkey, by the many victims of the earthquake “. This is how Pope Francis underlined it today at the Angelus, addressing the faithful who packed Saint Peter’s Square. Almost a year after the start of Moscow’s war against Kiev, the Pontiff then turned his thoughts to the “daily dramas of the dear Ukrainian people” and “of so many peoples who suffer because of the war, poverty, lack of freedom, of environmental devastation”. In this sense, he expressed his closeness to the “people of New Zealand hit in recent days by a devastating cyclone.”
War, earthquakes, deprivation of liberty, including religious, and increasingly frequent environmental devastation linked to climate change are some of the points that the Pope addressed at the conclusion of the Marian prayer. Earlier, when commenting on the words proposed for today’s liturgy as an introduction to Marian prayer, he described the words of Jesus in the Gospel as “demanding” and “paradoxical”, because “he invites us to turn the other cheek and to love even our enemies”. The Pope defines as “extraordinary” what goes beyond “the normal calculations dictated by prudence”, when for fear of “being disappointed” we prefer to “love only those who love us”.
The Lord warns that this “is not enough, this is not Christian” and that if we stay “in the ordinary” things “do not change. If God followed this logic, we would have no hope of salvation!”, but God “goes further beyond the usual criteria” with which humans live relationships.
Continuing his reflection, Francis spoke of the challenge contained in the words of Jesus. “He asks us to open ourselves to the extraordinary of a gratuitous love. While we always try to balance the accounts, Christ encourages us – he said – to live the imbalance of love”, because “Jesus is not a good accountant”. Without this imbalance, Christ “would not have come looking for us when we were lost and far away.” And taking up the words of the Apostle Paul, the pontiff recalled how Christ died “for us” when “we were still sinners”, confirming a love “always disproportionate”. “Today – he continued – he also asks us to live like this, because only in this way will we truly bear witness to Him”, leaving behind the logic of self-interest, calculations and convenience.
Christ “invites us not to respond to evil with evil, to dare to do good, to risk surrender, even if we receive little or nothing in return. Because it is this love,” the Pope concluded, with a thought of the many wars that bloody the planet – the one that slowly transforms conflicts, shortens distances, overcomes enmities and heals the wounds of hatred”. Hence her final invitation to pray to the Virgin, who by responding to God “with her ‘yes’ without her calculations, allowed her to make of herself the masterpiece of her Grace”.
