“When
God comes near to us, there is feasting.”
This was a central focus of
Pope Francis’ remarks following the readings at Mass in the chapel of
the Domus Sanctae Marthae residence on Thursday morning, together with
the Council of 8 Cardinals meeting this week at the Vatican.
Pope
Francis spoke of the need to resist transforming our memory of salvation
into a mere recollection or an “habitual event”.
Ezra’s
reading from the Book of the Law – which was believed lost, as recoded
in the first Reading of the day from the Book of Nehemiah – occasioned
the Holy Father’s reflections.
The People of God, he said, “had the
memory of the Law, but it was a distant memory.” The recovery of the Law
brought them, “because they had the experience of closeness of
salvation”:
“This is important not only in the great moments in
history, but also in the moments of our life: we all have the memory of
salvation, everyone. I wonder, though: is this memory close to us, or is
it a memory a bit far away, spread a little thin, a bit archaic, a
little like a museum [piece]… it can get far away [from us]… and when
the memory is not close, when we do not experience the closeness of
memory, it enters into a process of transformation, and the memory
becomes a mere recollection.”
When memory is distant, he added,
“it is transformed into recollection, but when it comes near, it turns
into joy, and this is the joy of the people.” This, he continued,
constitutes “a principle of our Christian life.” When memory is already
close, said Pope Francis, “it warms the heart and gives us joy.”:
“This
joy is our strength. The joy of the nearness of memory. Domesticated
memory, on the other hand, which moves away and becomes a mere
recollection, does not warm the heart. It gives us neither joy nor
strength. This encounter with memory is an event of salvation, it is an
encounter with the love of God that has made history with us and saved
us. It is a meeting of salvation - and it is so wonderful to be saved,
that we need to make feast.”
The Church, said Pope Francis, has
“[Christ’s] memory”: the “memory of the Passion of the Lord.” We too, he
said, run the risk of “pushing this memory away, turning it into a mere
recollection, in a rote exercise.”:
“Every week we go to church,
or rather when someone dies, we go to the funeral … and this memory
often times bores us, because it is not near. It is sad, but the Mass is
often turned into a social event and we are not close to the memory of
the Church, which is the presence of the Lord before us. Imagine this
beautiful scene in the Book of Nehemiah: Ezra who carries the Book of
Israel’s memory and the people once again grow near to their memory and
weep, the heart is warmed, is joyful, it feels that the joy of the Lord
is its strength – and the people makes a feast, without fear, simply.”
“Let
us ask the Lord,” concluded Pope Francis, “ for the grace to always
have His memory close to us, a memory close and not domesticated by
habit, by so many things, and pushed away into mere recollection.”