Vatican
City, 12 May 2013 (VIS) – “Let us look to the new saints in light
of the Word of God that has been proclaimed,” the Pope said during
his homily at the Mass in which three new saints were canonized. “It
is a Word that has invited us to faithfulness to Christ, even unto
martyrdom. It has recalled for us the urgency and beauty of bearing
Christ and his Gospel to all. It has spoken to us of the witness of
charity, without which even martyrdom and mission lose their
Christian savour.”
The
Martyrs of Otranto were more than 800 men from the southern Italian
city who had survived the siege and invasion of Otranto only to be
decapitated on the outskirts of the city when they refused to
renounce their faith and died witnessing to the Risen Christ. “Where
did they find the strength to remain faithful,” the Pope asked.
“Precisely from the faith, which makes us see beyond the limits of
our human sight, beyond this earthly life … God will never leave us
without strength and serenity. While we venerate the Martyrs of
Otranto, let us ask God to sustain the many Christians who, precisely
at this time, now, and in many parts of the world, are still
suffering violence, that He give them the valour to be faithful and
to respond to evil with good.”
The
second saint canonized, Mother Laura Montoya, “was an instrument of
evangelisation, first as a teacher and then as the spiritual mother
of the indigenous peoples in whom she instilled hope, embracing them
with the love she had learned from God, bringing them to him with a
pedagogical efficiency that respected their culture and didn't put
itself in opposition to it. … This first saint born in the
beautiful Colombian land teaches us to be generous with God, to not
live the faith in isolation—as if it were possible to live the
faith in an isolated way—but to communicate it, to bear the joy of
the Gospel with words and witness of life in every sphere in which we
find ourselves. … She teaches us to see Jesus' face reflected in
others, to overcome indifference and selfishness, which corrode
Christian communities and corrode our hearts, and she teaches us to
embrace everyone without prejudice, without discrimination, and
without reticence, but with sincere love, giving them the best of
ourselves and above all sharing with them what we have that is most
precious—not our deeds or our institutions. No! What we have that
is most precious is Christ and his Gospel.”
Saint
Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, “renouncing a life of ease—and how
damaging the easy life, well-being, can be; the “embourgeoisement”
of our hearts that paralyses us—...to follow Jesus' call, who
taught her to love poverty so that she could love the poor and the
sick more. … The poor, the abandoned, the ill, the marginalized are
the flesh of Christ. Mother Lupita touched Christ's flesh and taught
us this way of acting: of not being embarrassed, not being afraid,
not being disgusted to 'touch the flesh of Christ'! … This new
Mexican saint invites us to love as Jesus has loved us and this
entails not being locked up in oneself, in our own problems, our own
ideas, our own interests, in this little world that causes us so much
harm, but to go out and go in search of who needs attention,
understanding, and help, in order to bring them the warm nearness of
God's love through tactful gestures of sincere affection and love.”
At
the end of his homily, the Pope emphasized that the new saints teach
us “faithfulness to Jesus and his Gospel, to proclaim him in word
and with our lives, witnessing to God's love with our love and with
our charity towards all.”
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Wonderful Conanization from a great pope
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