Pope Francis concluded the second day of his pastoral visit to Kazakhstan with Holy Mass, while Catholics from all over the country and other parts of Asia went to Nur-Sultan for the Eucharist presided over by the Pope. In his homily, the Pope deepened the meaning of the Holy Cross of Christ and exhorted all races and religions to treat each other with love.
(Vatican News Network)Pope Francis presided at the Holy Mass in Expo square in Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, on September 14, the feast of the Holy Cross. In his homily, the Pope emphasized that there is a fundamental difference between the logic of God and the logic of the world. The cross was originally the “torture of death”, but thanks to Jesus Christ it has become an instrument for all to obtain salvation. The Pope encouraged those present to develop fraternity “because what we learn from the cross of Christ is love, not hatred”.
The Eucharist is held in Latin and Russian and the prayers of the faithful are recited in Russian and Kazakh. The ceremony was attended by about 6,000 people and among the priests who co-consecrated with the Pope: Mons.Tomasz B. Peta of the Archdiocese of Astana to the Holy Virgin Mary, and the President of the Central Asian Bishops’ Conference Meng Meng Mons. José Luis Mumbiela Sierra, and Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, Apostolic Vicar of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. In the first reading of the “Family Record”, the Lord sent fiery serpents into the wilderness to kill many Israelites who were impatient with the Lord. Anyone who bites will survive as long as he looks at the bronze serpent on the wooden post (see: Hu 21: 4-9). In some selected Gospel passages, St. John the Evangelist writes: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so the Son of man will be lifted up, so that all who believe in him may have eternal life in him” (cf.: John 3: 13-17)
The Pope first spoke of the Israelites who were impatient with God and with Moses, and invited them to reflect on their own experiences and collectives. The Pope said: “How many times have we been exhausted in the desert, losing faith and patience, without seeing the end of the journey! There is also a desert in this great country with a splendid scenery, which tells us about the fatigue and the tiredness in ours We also have moments of tiredness and trial, in which we no longer have the strength to raise our eyes to heaven and to God ”.
In these dark moments on a personal, ecclesiastical and social level, we are “bitten by the snake of lack of faith”, mired in pessimism, resignation and self-isolation. In Kazakhstan, in fact, “there is no shortage of painful bites”. “I am thinking of the fiery serpent of violence, persecuted by atheists, of an often obstructed road, in which the freedom of peoples is threatened and their dignity harmed,” said the Pope.
Referring to past experiences, the Pope reminded everyone not to think that the darkness of the past has disappeared forever. Pope Francis thus recalled the words of his predecessor, Saint John Paul II, during his visit to the country in September 2001: “Peace is not earned once and for all, but must be fought every day; so also for harmonious coexistence, holistic development and social justice among all ethnic groups and religious traditions May Kazakhstan increase ever more fraternity, dialogue and understanding …, built for solidarity and cooperation with other peoples, Bridges countries and cultures, which require everyone’s efforts. First of all it is necessary to renew faith in the Lord: look up, look at him, learn his love for the world and for his sacrifice on the cross ”.
Then the Pope spoke of the snake that saved lives. The Lord heard Moses’ plea in the desert and the Pope asked: Why did God not destroy the serpents himself, but through Moses? “This style of conduct revealed to us his actions in the face of sin. Then, as today, in the great spiritual battles that have existed until the end of history, God did not remove the downward path that the human being is free to walk, “the Pope explained.
“In the face of our downward trend, God has given us new heights: if we look up to Jesus, the wounds of sin cannot continue to hold us back, because on the cross he himself took the poison of sin and death, he defeated its destructive power Faced with the spread of sin in the world, it is precisely what the Father does, who gave us Jesus, who is close to us in ways we could never have imagined ”.
Jesus “made himself sin for us” (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), the serpent who brought salvation. Our salvation, the Pope says, consists in looking at Jesus crucified: He offers us a new perspective on our life and on our history: “From the cross of Christ we learn love, not hatred; forgiveness, not revenge ”.
«The open arms of Jesus are the tender embrace of God who wants to receive us, to show us the fraternity that we are called to live with one another and with all men. His arms show us the way, that of the Christian The way: it is not the way to impose, coercive, powerful and violent. Not at all the way to attack other brothers and sisters with the cross of Christ! Other brothers and sisters also depend on Christ’s gift for their lives. The way is another, the way of salvation: it is the way of humble, free, world-oriented love, without ifs and buts “.
At the end of the sermon, the Pope urged everyone not to live with the poison, “not to bite, not to gossip” and “not to pollute the world with sin and mutual distrust of evil”. The meaning of living the Christian life is “to be a joyful witness of new life, love and peace”.
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