Vatican City, 25 April 2014 (VIS) –
Yesterday afternoon celebrated Mass in the Roman church of St.
Ignatius of Loyola to give thanks for the canonisation of the Jesuit
father St. Jose de Anchieta S.J. (1534-1597), evangeliser of Brazil,
linguist, dramatist and founder of the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de
Janeiro. Beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, Pope Francis
extended his liturgical cult to the universal Church on 3 April, a
process equivalent to canonisation.
In his homily, the Pope commented on
the Gospel story of the disciples of Emmaus who relate their
experience to Peter, who has also seen the Risen Christ; then shortly
after Christ Himself appears in the room. “The disciples cannot
believe their joy; they cannot believe because of their joy”, he
said. “It is a moment of wonder, of encounter with Jesus Christ, in
which there seems to be too much joy to be true; indeed, to assume
the joy and wonder of that moment seems risky to us and we are
tempted to take refuge in scepticism, in 'not exaggerating'. It is
easier to believe in a spirit than in the living Christ! It is easier
to go to a necromancer who predicts the future, who reads cards, than
to trust in the hope of a triumphant Christ, a Christ who vanquishes
death! An idea or imagination is easier to believe than the docility
of this Lord who rises again from death, and what he invites us to!
This process of relativising faith ends up distancing us from the
encounter, distancing us from God's caress. It is as if we
'distilled' the reality of the encounter with Jesus Christ in the
still of fear, in the still of excessive security, of wanting to
control the encounter ourselves. The disciples were afraid of joy …
and so are we”.
He went on to speak about the reading
from the Acts of the Apostles which narrates the healing of the
paralytic, prostrate at the door of the Temple, begging. Peter and
John were unable to give him anything he sought: neither gold nor
silver, but they cure him by offering him what they have: the name of
Jesus. The crippled man's joy is contagious and, in the midst of the
hubbub Peter announces the message. “The joy of the encounter with
Jesus Christ, which it is so frightening for us to accept, is
infectious and cries out the message: and this is how the Church
grows! The paralytic believes, because 'the Church does not grow by
proselytism, but by attraction'; the testimonial attraction of this
joy that proclaims Jesus Christ. It is a witness born of joy,
accepted and then transformed into proclamation. It is the
foundational joy … without this joy, a Church cannot be founded! A
Christian community cannot be established! It is an apostolic joy
that irradiates and expands”.
Also St. Jose de Anchieta knew how to
communicate what he had experienced with the Lord, what he had seen
and heard from Him … and, along with Nobrega, he was the first
Jesuit Ignatius send to America. He was a boy aged nineteen. He had
so much joy that he was able to found a nation: he put in place the
cultural foundations of a nation, in Jesus Christ. He had not studied
theology, and he had not studied philosophy; he was a boy! But he had
felt the gaze of Jesus Christ, and he had let himself be filled with
joy, and chose light. This was and is his holiness. He was not afraid
of joy”.
The Bishop of Rome concluded by
mentioning that St. Jose de Anchieta had a beautiful hymn to the
Virgin Mary, to whom he compared the message of peace, that proclaims
the joy of the Good News. “May she, who in that Sunday dawn,
sleepless with hope, was not afraid of joy, accompany us on our
pilgrimage, inviting us all to rise, to set our paralyses aside, to
enter together into the peace and joy that Jesus, the Risen Lord,
promises us”.
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