At 17.00 this afternoon, in the Vatican Basilica, the Eucharistic Celebration was held in memory of the Roman Pontiff Francis, on the third day of the Novendiali.

The Church of Rome was specially invited to the Celebration.

The concelebrated Mass was presided over by His Eminence Cardinal Baldassare Reina, Vicar General of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome.

The following is the homily delivered by Cardinal Baldassare Reina during the Holy Mass:

Homily of His Eminence Cardinal Baldassare Reina

My meagre voice is here today to express the prayer and suffering of one part of the Church, that of Rome, which feels the weight of the responsibility that history has assigned to it.

In these days, Rome is a people that mourns its Bishop, a people together with other peoples who have waited in line, finding a place within the city in order to weep and pray, like sheep without a shepherd.

Sheep without a shepherd.  This is a metaphor that allows us to interpret the emotions of these days, and to appreciate more deeply the image we have received from the Gospel of John, the ear of grain that must die in order to bear fruit.  It is a parable that tells of a shepherd’s love for his flock.

At this time, as the world is so often in flames and few have the courage to proclaim the Gospel in a way that can translate into a vision of a possible and real future, humankind appears like sheep without a shepherd.  This image comes from the lips of Jesus, casting his eyes on the crowd who followed him.

Around Jesus are the apostles who tell him about everything they have done and taught.  The words, the gestures, the actions learned from the Master, the proclamation of the Kingdom of the coming God, the need for a change of life, joined with signs capable of giving flesh to the words: a touch, an outstretched hand, disarmed conversation, without judgment, liberating, without fear of contact with impurity.  In carrying out this service, necessary for reawakening faith, for rekindling the hope that the evil present in the world would not have the last word, that life is stronger than death, the apostles have not even had time to eat.

Jesus felt the burden, and this comforts us now.  Jesus, the true shepherd of history that needs his salvation, knows the burden that weighs upon each of us in continuing his mission, especially when we will have to choose the first of his shepherds on earth.

As at the time of the first disciples, there are achievements as well as failures, weariness and fear.  The significance is immense, and temptations creep in that obscure the only thing that counts, namely to wish, to seek, to work in the expectation of “a new heaven and a new earth”.

And this cannot be the time for manoeuvres, tactics, caution – not a time to follow the instinct to turn back, or worse, to retaliate or seek alliances of power.  What is needed is a radical willingness to enter into God’s dream, entrusted to our poor hands.

I am struck at this time by what we are told in the Book of Revelation: “I, John, saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”. A new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem.

Faced with the proclamation of this newness, we cannot give in to that mental and spiritual indolence that binds us to the forms of experience of God and ecclesial practices known in the past, and which we would wish to be repeated ad infinitum, subjugated by the fear of the losses attached to necessary changes.

I think of the many processes for the reform of the life of the Church undertaken by Pope Francis, and which transcend religious affiliations.  People recognized that he was a universal pastor, and the Barque of Peter needs this wide navigation that transcends and surprises.

People carry disquiet in their hearts, and I seem to see a question in them: what will become of the processes that have been initiated?

Our duty should be to discern and organise what has been started, in the light of what our mission requires, in the direction of a new heaven and a new earth, adorning the Bride for her husband, whereas we might seek to clothe the Bride according to worldly conveniences, guided by ideological pretensions that tear apart the unity of Christ’s garments.

To seek a shepherd today means above all to seek a guide who knows how to manage the fear of losses faced with the needs of the Gospel.

To seek a shepherd who has the gaze of Jesus, the epiphany of God’s humanity in a world that has inhuman traits.

To seek a shepherd who confirms that we must walk together, forming ministries and charisms; we are a People of God constituted to proclaim the Gospel.

Jesus, looking at the people who follow him, feels the stirring of compassion within him.  He sees women, men, children, old and young, poor and sick, with no one to take care of them, to quell their hunger from the jaws of a life that has become hard, and hunger for the Word.  Faced with those people, he knows himself to be their bread that does not disappoint, their water that quenches their endless thirst, the balm that heals their wounds.

He feels the same compassion that Moses felt at the end of his days when, from the summit of the mountain of Abarim, facing the land he will not be able to cross, looking at the multitude he has led, he prays to the Lord that the people will not be reduced to being a flock without a shepherd, a people he cannot keep with him, a people who must keep moving forward.

That prayer is now our prayer, that of the entire Church and of all the women and men who ask to be guided and supported in the toil of life, amid doubts and contradictions, orphans of a word that guides amidst siren songs that flatter the instincts of self-redemption; that breaks solitude, gathers together the discarded, does not give in to arrogance, and has the courage not to bend the Gospel to the tragic compromises of fear, complicity with worldly mindsets, and alliances that are blind and deaf to the signs of the Holy Spirit.

The compassion of Jesus is that of the prophets who manifest the suffering of God in seeing the people lost and abused by bad shepherds, by mercenaries who take advantage of the flock, and flee when the wolf comes.  Bad shepherds care nothing for their sheep; they abandon them to their peril, and this is why they are captured and scattered.

Whereas the Good Shepherd offers his life for his sheep.

The passage from the Gospel of John, proclaimed in this liturgy, speaks of this radical shepherd’s disposition, and presents us with the testimony of how Jesus is able to see beyond death, when the hour would come that would glorify his mission.  The hour of death on the Cross that manifested his unconditional love for all.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.”  The grain of wheat that has sought the ground with the Incarnation of the Word, has fallen to raise those who fall, has come to seek those who are lost.

His death is a planted seed that leaves us suspended at that time in which the seed can no longer be seen, enveloped by the earth that hides it, making us fear that it has been wasted.  A pause that might distress us, but that can become a threshold of hope, a crack in the doubt, a light in the night, the garden of Easter.

The promised fruitfulness belongs to the willingness to die; it becomes bitten wheat, hostage to the infidelity and ingratitude to which Jesus, the Good Shepherd who offers his life for his sheep, responds with the forgiveness requested from the Father, while he dies abandoned by his friends.

The Good Shepherd sows with his own death, forgiving his enemies, preferring their salvation, the salvation of all, to his own.

If we want to be faithful to the Lord, to the grain of wheat that has fallen on the ground, we must do so by sowing with our life.

And how can we fail to recall the Psalm: “Those who sow in tears will reap with cries of joy”!

There are times such as our own in which, like the farmer to whom the psalmist refers, sowing becomes an extreme act, moved by the radicality of an act of faith.

It is a time of famine, the seed sown on the earth is taken from the last supply without which one dies.  The farmer weeps because he knows that this last act is asking him to put his life at risk.

But God does not abandon his people.  He does not leave his shepherds alone; he will not allow, as with his Son, that they are abandoned in the tomb, in the grave of the earth.

Our faith holds the promise of a joyful harvest, but one that must pass through the death of the seed that is our life.

That extreme, total, gruelling gesture of the sower made me think back to Pope Francis’ Easter Sunday, to that unsparing pouring out of himself in blessing and embracing his people, the day before he died.  The last act of his unsparing sowing of the proclamation of God’s mercies.

Thank you, Pope Francis.

May Mary, the holy Virgin whom we, in Rome, venerate as the Salus populi romani, who now accompanies and watches over his mortal remains, receive his soul and protect us in the continuation of his mission. Amen.