Vatican City, Aug 13, 2019 / 10:45 am (CNA).- Pope Francis wrote a heartfelt letter Tuesday to an Italian community still suffering one year after a bridge collapse. His message: “Know that you are not alone.”
“Jesus passed before us through suffering and death. He has taken upon us all our sufferings. He was despised, humiliated, beaten, nailed to the cross and brutally killed. God’s response to our pain was closeness, a presence that accompanies us, that does not leave us alone,” Pope Francis wrote in a letter published Aug. 13.
Pope Francis’ letter was published in a local newspaper in Genoa to mark the one year anniversary of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge, which killed 43 people.
“Jesus made himself like us, and for this reason, we have Him next to us, to cry with us in the most difficult moments of our lives. We look to Him, we entrust our questions to Him, our pain, our anger,” the pope continued.
“Today I want to tell you one thing first of all: know that you are not alone. Know that you are never alone. Know that God our Father has answered our cries and our questions, not with words, but with a presence that accompanies us, that of His Son,” Francis said.
“I would also like to tell you that Jesus on the cross was not alone,” he said. “Beneath that scaffold was his mother, Mary. Stabat Mater, Mary was under the cross, to share the suffering of the Son.”
“We are not alone, we have a Mother who from Heaven looks at us with love and is close to us. Let us cling to her and say to her: ‘Mother,’ as child does when it is afraid and wants to be comforted and reassured,” he added.
Pope Francis said that the collapse of the Morandi Bridge inflicted a wound on the heart of Genoa, and encouraged solidarity with the local Catholic community.
“The more we are aware of our weakness, of the precariousness of our human condition, the more we rediscover the beauty of human relationships, of the bonds that unite us, like families, communities, civil society,” he said.
“I know that even after a great tragedy that has hurt your families and your city, you have been able to respond, to get up, to look forward,” he said. “Don’t lose hope, don’t let it be stolen! Continue to stand by those most affected.”
“We are men and women full of defects and weaknesses, but we have a Merciful Father to whom we can turn, a crucified and Risen Son who walks with us, the Holy Spirit who assists and accompanies us. We have a Mother in Heaven who continues to spread her mantle over us without ever abandoning us,” Pope Francis said.
“I would also like to tell you that you are not alone because the Christian community … is with you and shares your sufferings and your difficulties,” he said.
Pope Francis wrote a heartfelt letter Tuesday to an Italian community still suffering one year after a bridge collapse. His message: “Know that you are not alone.”
“Jesus passed before us through suffering and death. He has taken upon us all our sufferings. He was despised, humiliated, beaten, nailed to the cross and brutally killed. God’s response to our pain was closeness, a presence that accompanies us, that does not leave us alone,” Pope Francis wrote in a letter published Aug. 13.
Pope Francis’ letter was published in a local newspaper in Genoa to mark the one year anniversary of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge, which killed 43 people.
“Jesus made himself like us, and for this reason, we have Him next to us, to cry with us in the most difficult moments of our lives. We look to Him, we entrust our questions to Him, our pain, our anger,” the pope continued.
“Today I want to tell you one thing first of all: know that you are not alone. Know that you are never alone. Know that God our Father has answered our cries and our questions, not with words, but with a presence that accompanies us, that of His Son,” Francis said.
“I would also like to tell you that Jesus on the cross was not alone,” he said. “Beneath that scaffold was his mother, Mary. Stabat Mater, Mary was under the cross, to share the suffering of the Son.”
“We are not alone, we have a Mother who from Heaven looks at us with love and is close to us. Let us cling to her and say to her: ‘Mother,’ as child does when it is afraid and wants to be comforted and reassured,” he added.
Pope Francis said that the collapse of the Morandi Bridge inflicted a wound on the heart of Genoa, and encouraged solidarity with the local Catholic community.
“The more we are aware of our weakness, of the precariousness of our human condition, the more we rediscover the beauty of human relationships, of the bonds that unite us, like families, communities, civil society,” he said.
“I know that even after a great tragedy that has hurt your families and your city, you have been able to respond, to get up, to look forward,” he said. “Don’t lose hope, don’t let it be stolen! Continue to stand by those most affected.”
“We are men and women full of defects and weaknesses, but we have a Merciful Father to whom we can turn, a crucified and Risen Son who walks with us, the Holy Spirit who assists and accompanies us. We have a Mother in Heaven who continues to spread her mantle over us without ever abandoning us,” Pope Francis said.
“I would also like to tell you that you are not alone because the Christian community … is with you and shares your sufferings and your difficulties,” he said.
[…]
We read: Pope Francis encouraged members of ecclesial groups to ‘remain in harmony with the Church, since harmony is a gift of the Holy Spirit.’” YES, “harmony with the Church…” But also been thinkin’ ’bout the Holy Spirit and the polyglot Synodal Casserole!
The Vatican keyed its external and provisional agreement with China to the example of “patience” lifted from former Secretary of State Cardinal Casaroli (instructive coincidence of terms, this!). https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pope-francis-said-cardinal-casaroli-is-his-diplomatic-model-so-who-was-cardinal-casaroli
Two straight questions, plus an x-ray of shallow-dish Synodal Casserole:
QUESTION: Are we to expect the Synodal Casserole to have the same flat flavor as the transplanted policy of “patience” from Casaroli in Eastern Europe, and now the sinicized Church? Same policy, same concessions, probably “provisional,” and same outcome?
QUESTION: Wondering, however, if the novelty of lay members of the Synod on Synodality in October 2023 might actually introduce the clerics to the parental notion of “tough love”? The long-awaited, real, and growth-enabling “gift of the Holy Spirit”?
X-RAY: A quarter of a century ago, FR. STANLEY L. JAKI (1924-2009) anticipated the margarine-spread “patience” atop our polyglot Synodal Casserole:
“Those theologians, almost to a man latter-day modernist critics of papal infallibility, seem to overlook a very curious difference between Newman and themselves. While Newman humbly confessed that he had never sinned against the Holy Spirit, they boldly speak in the name of that Spirit. But as all too often in the past, the step from Heiliger Gest (Holy Spirit) to Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) is a very short step. And what if that spirit is merely the Geist to which Hegel paid supreme homage, but which turned out to be his own sadly fallible mind trapped in the labyrinths not so much of its own evolution as of its endless convolutions” (“And on this Rock,” Christendom Press, 1997, p. 118).
Maybe the Synod will give a harmonious ear to the adults in the room–whether seasoned lay people or even shepherd-clerics! The ingredient virtue of “patience,” but also salted with the needed governance of “tough love”?
G.K. CHESTERTON — “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
The Pilgrim Church is a healthy movement forward. Ecclesial movements are expressions of vitality and dynamism. Moving on is far healthier than embracing “stuckedness.”
“Forward?” And then there are those who say that a fixation on change is the most rigid and “stucked” rut of all. The tired world awaits a truly balanced dialogue (!) inclusive (!) of this insight. T.S. Eliot gives us at least a non-ideological starting point about both “stucknesses”:
“We are always faced both with the question ‘what must be destroyed?’ and with the question ‘what must be preserved?’ and neither Liberalism nor Conservatism, which are not philosophies and may be merely habits, is enough to guide us” (“The Idea of a Christian Society,” 1940).