Before the Angelus
After the Angelus
At midday today, the Holy Father Francis appeared at the window of his study in the Vatican Apostolic Palace to pray the Angelus with the faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
The following is the Pope’s introduction to the Marian prayer:
Before the Angelus
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
This Sunday’s liturgy offers us the parable of the tenants, to whom the householder entrusts the vineyard that he had planted, and then goes away (cf. Mt 21: 33-43). The loyalty of these tenants is thus put to the test: the vineyard is entrusted to them, and they must look after it, make it fruitful and deliver the harvest to the householder. When the time of the harvest arrives, the householder sends his servants to gather the fruits. But the tenants assume a possessive attitude: they do not consider themselves simple managers, but rather proprietors, and they refuse to deliver the harvest. They mistreat the servants, to the point of killing them. The householder is patient with them: he sends other servants, more numerous than the first, but the outcome is the same. In the end, with his patience, he decides to send his own son, but those tenants, prisoners of their possessive behaviour, kill the son too, thinking that in this way they would obtain his inheritance.
This story illustrates allegorically the reproaches the Prophets had voiced about the history of Israel. It is a story that belongs to us: it speaks of the covenant that God wished to establish with humanity and in which He has also called us to participate. However, this story of the covenant, like every story of love, has its positive moments but is also marked by betrayals and rejections. To make one understand how God the Father responds to rejections of His love and His proposed covenant, the evangelical passage puts a question on the lips of the owner of the vineyard: “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (v. 40). This question underscores that God’s disappointment at the evil behaviour of men is not the last word! And here is the great novelty of Christianity: a God Who, although disappointed by our mistakes and our sins, does not fail in His word; He does not stop and, above all, He does not retaliate!
Brothers and sisters, God doesn’t retaliate! God loves, He does not retaliate, He waits to forgive us, to embrace us. Through the “rejected stones” — and Christ is the first stone the builders rejected – through situations of weakness and sin, God continues to put out the “new wine” of his vineyard, namely mercy; this is the new wine of the Lord’s vineyard: mercy. There is just one obstacle to God’s tenacious and tender will: our arrogance and our presumption, which at times even becomes violence. Faced with these attitudes, and where no fruit is produced, the Word of God keeps all its force of reproach and admonition: “the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (v. 43).
The urgency to respond with fruits of goodness to the Lord’s call, who calls us to become His vineyard, helps us to understand what is new and original in Christianity. It is not so much the sum of precepts and moral norms, but first of all a proposal of love that God, through Jesus, has made and continues to make to humanity. It is an invitation to enter into this story of love, becoming a lively and open vineyard, rich in fruits and hope for all. A closed vineyard can become wild and produce wild grapes. We are called to come out of the vineyard and to put ourselves at the service of the brothers that are not with us, to jolt one another and encourage each other, to remind ourselves to be the Lord’s vineyard in every environment, including the most distant and challenging.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us invoke the intercession of Mary Most Holy, so that she may help us be everywhere, especially in the peripheries of society, the vineyard that the Lord has planted for the good of all, and to bring the new wine of the Lord’s mercy.
After the Angelus
Dear brothers and sisters,
Yesterday, in Milan, Fr. Arsenio da Trigolo (born Giuseppe Migliavacca) priest of the Friars Minor Capuchin and Founder of the Sisters of Mary Most Holy Consoler, was proclaimed Blessed. We praise the Lord for this humble servant of His, who even in adversity and trials – he had so many – never lost hope.
I greet all pilgrims affectionately, especially the families and parish groups from Italy and from different parts of the world, especially the faithful of Australia, France and Slovakia, as well as those of Poland, joining spiritually with their countrymen who today celebrate the Day of the Pope.
I affectionately greet the group of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Citta della Pieve, accompanied by Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti: dear brothers and sisters, I encourage you to continue joyfully your journey of faith, under the solicitous and tender gaze of our celestial Mother: she is our refuge and our hope! Go forward.
I greet the faithful of Grumo Appula, the scouts of Gioiosa Ionica, the parish choir of Siror, Trento, and confirmands of Saint Theodore, Sardinia.
I wish you all a good Sunday and please, do not forget to pray for me. Have a good lunch, and goodbye.
