"The Sunday of weeping"

Sunday, 29 March 2020

[Multimedia]

Introduction

I think of the many people who are weeping: isolated people, people in quarantine, elderly people on their own, people who are hospitalised and those in therapy, parents who see that, since they have no salary, they cannot afford to feed their children. Many people are weeping. Let us too accompany them from our hearts. And it would not do us any harm to weep a little, as our Lord wept for all His people.

Homily

Jesus had friends. He loved them all, but He had friends with whom He had a special relationship, as one does with friends, of greater love, of greater trust… Very, very often, He stayed at the house of these siblings: Lazarus, Martha, Mary… And Jesus felt pain for the sickness and death of His friend. He arrives at the tomb and is deeply moved. He asks, very troubled: “Where have you laid him?” (see Jn 11:34). And Jesus breaks out in tears. Jesus, God and man, weeps. There is another time in the Gospel that says that Jesus wept: when He wept over Jerusalem (see Lk 19:41-42). With what tenderness Jesus weeps! He weeps from the heart. He weeps with love. He weeps with His friends who weep Jesus’ tears. Perhaps He wept at other times in his life, we do not know; certainly on the Mount of Olives. But Jesus weeps out of love, always.

He is deeply moved and very troubled, and weeps. How many times we have heard this emotion of Jesus, with that repeated phrase: “His heart was moved with compassion” (see Mt 9:36; Mt 13:14). Jesus cannot look at the people and not feel compassion. His eyes are connected with His heart. Jesus sees with His eyes, but He sees with His heart and is capable of weeping.

Today, faced with a world that suffers greatly, many people who suffer the consequences of this pandemic, I wonder: Am I capable of weeping, as Jesus would certainly have done and does now? Is my heart like Jesus’? And if it is too hard, [even if] I can speak and do good in order to help, if my heart is not entering in and I am not capable of weeping, ask the Lord for this grace: Lord, that I might weep with You, weep with your people who are suffering right now. Many are weeping today. And we, from this altar, from this sacrifice of Jesus, of Jesus who was not ashamed of weeping, let us ask for the grace to weep.  May today be for everyone like a Sunday of tears.

Spiritual Communion

My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if you were already there, and I unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You.