Faith is not alienation or a crooked deal, but a path of beauty and truth marked out by Jesus to prepare our eyes to gaze without glasses at “the marvellous face of God”, in the definitive dwelling place prepared for each one of us. It is an invitation not to let ourselves be gripped by fear and to live life as a preparation for seeing better, hearing better and loving more, as Pope Francis said in his homily at the Mass he celebrated on Friday morning, 26 April, in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

Concelebrating with the Pope were Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, President of the Labour Office of the Apostolic See and of the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia, and Fr Sergio Pellini, sdb, Director-General of the Vatican Press and L’Osservatore Romano. Among those present were the Supervisory and Auditing Council of the Vatican Press, a group of officers of the Gendarmes Corps and staff of the Vatican Labour Office and of L’Osservatore Romano.

Pope Francis based his homily on the Gospel passage of St John (14:1-6). “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself...that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going”.

Jesus’ words, the Pope commented, “are very beautiful. At a time of taking leave, Jesus speaks to his disciples from his heart. He knows they are sad, for they realize that things are not going well”. So now Jesus encourages them, cheers them, reassures them and unfolds before them a horizon of hope. “Let not your hearts be troubled”.

“I am going to prepare a place for you”. “What is this preparation?”, Pope Francis asked himself. “How is it done? What is this place like? What does preparing the place mean? Renting a room in heaven?” Preparing a place means preparing “our capacities for enjoying, for seeing, for hearing and for understanding the beauty of what awaits us, of that homeland for which we are bound”.

The Pope ended his homily asking “that the Lord give us this strong hope” and also “the courage to greet the homeland from afar”. And lastly, “may he give us the humility to let ourselves be prepared, that is, to let the Lord prepare the definitive dwelling place in our heart, in our sight and in our hearing”.