Blessed Are the Troublemakers

 

May 17, 2013

by Biltrix • New Evangelization • Tags: Catholic, Catholic Church, Humor, Pope Francis, religion

You know what really annoys me? This guy.

Yeah! That’s right! We’re Catholic!

Don’t take this with a grain of salt. If we take him at his word and follow his example, we have to be a holy nuisance and annoy the [you-know-what] out of people. Literally.

Yesterday, Pope Francis made it clear. He wants You to be a troublemaker too.

Read on… (From CNA/EWTN News:)

“If we annoy people, blessed be the Lord,” said Pope Francis during his morning Mass at the Vatican on May 16.

“We can ask the Holy Spirit to give us all this apostolic fervor and to give us the grace to be annoying when things are too quiet in the Church,” he said at the chapel of the Saint Martha residence, where he lives.

He celebrated the Mass alongside Cardinal Peter Turkson and Bishop Mario Toso, the president and the secretary of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace.

Council staff and employees from Vatican Radio were among those attending the Eucharistic celebration.

The Pope preached on today’s first reading from Acts 22 and contrasted “backseat Christians” with those who have apostolic zeal.

“There are those who are well mannered, who do everything well, but are unable to bring people to the Church through proclamation and apostolic zeal,” he stated.

The pontiff said apostolic zeal “implies an element of madness,” which he labeled as “healthy” and “spiritual.”

He added that it “can only be understood in an atmosphere of love” and that it is not an “enthusiasm for power and possession.”

Pope Francis also dwelt on St. Paul’s actions in the reading from Acts.

“Paul, in preaching of the Lord, was a nuisance, but he had deep within him that most Christian of attitudes, apostolic zeal,” he stated.

“He was not a man of compromise, no!” he exclaimed. “The truth, forward! The proclamation of Jesus Christ, forward!”

The Pope noted that St. Paul’s fate was one “with many crosses, but he keeps going, he looks to the Lord and keeps going.”

“He is a man who, with his preaching, his work, his attitude irritates others, because testifying to Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Jesus Christ makes us uncomfortable.

“It threatens our comfort zones, even Christian comfort zones, right?” he asked the congregation. “It irritates us.”

Pope Francis underscored that the Lord “always wants us to move forward, forward, forward, not to take refuge in a quiet life or in cozy structures.”

Saint Paul’s apostolic zeal, he observed, comes from knowing Jesus Christ.

Paul did not find and encounter Jesus Christ with an intellectual or scientific knowledge, but with “that first knowledge of the heart and of a personal encounter.”

According to the Pope, St. Paul was a “fiery” individual who was always in trouble, “not in trouble for troubles’ sake, but for Jesus” because “proclaiming Jesus is the consequence.”

“The Church has so much need of this, not only in distant lands, in the young churches, among people who do not know Jesus Christ, but here in the cities, in our cities, they need this proclamation of Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis stressed.

“So let us ask the Holy Spirit for this grace of apostolic zeal, let’s be Christians with apostolic zeal, onwards, as the Lord says to Paul, take courage!” he exclaimed.

To sum it all up: Blessed are the Troublemakers; they will set the world on fire for the Kingdom of God!

I’m John Paul II and I approve of this message

I second that!

Disclaimer: I hope that didn’t annoy anybody… (Not really). No seriously… (Not).

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The ‘smell of his sheep’– the earthy language and practical wisdom of Pope Francis

CatholicCulture.org Insights

 

Phil Lawler May 15, 2013 5:23 PM

Today Pope Francis acted like a cheerleader. At his regular weekly audience he asked the 80,000 people in St. Peter’s Square if they would pray daily to the Holy Spirit,
and when they answered, he tried the old crowd-rallying technique. “I
can’t hear you!” he said, and asked the question again, prompting a
louder response.

 

Two months into his pontificate, we have come to expect this sort of
thing from our new Pontiff. His personal style is straightforward and
homespun. He speaks simply, and has an knack for expressing lofty ideas
in earthy images.

 

Just yesterday, for example, the Holy Father told religious superiors
that women living in consecrated life should be “mothers and not
spinsters.” In a still more noteworthy line, a few weeks earlier, he had
told the pastors of Rome that they should be “shepherds who have the
smell of their sheep.”

 

What a wonderful, vivid image! The Pope could have said that priests
should mingle with their people, should learn all about the lives and
loves, the cares and concerns, of the people in their parishes. But “the
smell of their sheep” conveys the same idea much more powerfully.

 

Take another example of the Pope’s approach: his decision not to distribute Communion when he celebrates Mass in public.
Many Catholic prelates have worried about the confusion that might be
created if they administered the Eucharist to a Catholic whose public
actions have caused scandal. Thousands of words have been written about
whether Catholic politicians who support legal abortion should be denied
Communion. Pope Francis has not entered directly into that debate, but
he has found a practical way to avoid furthering scandal. No renegade
Catholic will be able to exploit a “photo op” with this Pontiff.

 

When I began reading about our new Pope, before working on my own book about his life and the prospects for his pontificate,
I quickly recognized that this was a man who deals in concrete facts
rather than abstractions, who prefers to deal with people rather than
ideas. He has not written books. He has avoided interviews. He has not
hatched ambitious plans. He has not founded think-tanks. He has not made
world tours, giving speeches in different cities. He has not called
press conferences to issue major statements on social affairs. In short
he has not done the things that ordinarily bring a cleric to public
prominence. Yet somehow he has been chosen to occupy the world’s most
prominent post.

 

How did that happen? How did the cardinal-electors settle on this
simple, unassuming prelate as the successor to St. Peter? I suspect they
recognized Cardinal Bergoglio as an unusually gifted pastor. I think
they noticed—although few cardinals would have expressed it in these
terms—that he had the “smell of his sheep.””Follow a fat Pope with a
thin Pope,” runs the old Roman adage. The Pontiff’s physical girth is
not important, of course, but the mixture of personal characteristics
is. So now, after two Pontiffs with extraordinary scholarly credentials,
we have a Pope who has no pretensions to intellectual status. After two
Pontiffs who were active participants in the Second Vatican Council,
anxious to help us understand the Council’s teachings, we have a Pontiff
who was ordained to the priesthood after the Council, and has spent his
entire ministry putting those teachings into practice. After two great
theorists we have a practical tactician. As I wrote in A Call to Serve:

 

Pope Francis no longer needs to explain the teachings of the
Council. That work has been admirably done by his two predecessors, who
have left a body of teaching that will take many years to digest. The
challenge now is to put the teaching into practice. Vatican II
proclaimed the “age of the laity,” and reminded the faithful that all
Catholics share equally in the responsibility to proclaim the faith. It
falls to Pope Francis to rally the faithful in that great effort. One
might almost say that John Paul II and Benedict XVI wrote the textbook
on Vatican II, and Francis is producing the “how-to” manual.

In saying that these three Pontiffs have different talents, I do not
mean to suggest that one is better than the others. Each Pope has
different strengths; each responds to the challenges of a particular
time. The needs of the Church today are not the same as they were in
1978 or 2005. The Holy Spirit chooses the man for the hour.

 

Some Catholics, I realize, are uncomfortable with a Pope who speaks
in such plain, unsophisticated language. But Jesus filled the Gospels
with images of farmers and fishermen, shepherds and vine-dressers. The
Lord spoke to ordinary people in their ordinary language. There are
always some people who fear that the Pope might “lower himself” to speak
with people below his station, just as the Pharisees were troubled that
Jesus dined with publicans.

 

The public style of Pope Francis is something new to the Catholic
world, and for now its novelty captures attention. Whether it will be
equally effective as the novelty wears off, remains to be seen. For now,
let’s enjoy a refreshing new approach.

Blog :  http://www.parchment9.wordpress.com

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Your own hope of resurrection, though not yet realized, is sure and certain.!

Write down, therefore, what you have seen, and what is happening, and what will happen afterwards. (Rev. 1:19) By Jason : Action, not just words….

 

 

 

by Jason

Death has lost it’s sting!

 

 

 

Understanding
– With the gift of understanding, we comprehend how we need to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. A person with understanding is not confused by all the conflicting messages in our culture about the right way to live.

Reading:
You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality which even now we possess in hope.

This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the sign of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision of the flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the dead, he put off the mortality of the flesh; his risen body was still the same body, but it was no longer subject to death. By his resurrection he consecrated Sunday, or the Lord’s day. though the third after his passion, this day is the eighth after the Sabbath, and thus also the first day of the week.

And so your own hope of resurrection, though not yet realized, is sure and certain, because you have received the sacrament or sign of this reality, and have been given the pledge of the Spirit.  (Second reading from today’s Office of Readings from a Sermon by Saint Augustine,bishop)

Observation:
For me, today is the first day of living in the Spirit and no longer
being controlled by the flesh.  Why can I make such a bold claim,
because my flesh has been transformed by my relationship to Jesus
through my Baptism, who died and was resurrected to transform me into a new creation.   My flesh will need to be renewed again, by the reception of the other Sacraments that sustain me in this world, but today is the first day in a long time that I can say that I know that Jesus is the Way, and the Truth and the Life, and it is by His grace that I am healed.

Personification:
Faithfulness. It is the fruit of faithfulness that I want to display
today and everyday for the rest of my life.  As I looked at the list of
the Fruits of the Holy Spirit on my journaling page, I thought
faithfulness looked and sounded the most like thankfulness.  I believe that I can display the fruit of faithfulness, by giving thanks and
praise to God who is responsible for everything good in my life.

Prayer:  Glory and praise to our God, who alone gives light to our days…Many are the blessings he bears to those who trust in His ways…Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for gracing us with your presence in our church and in all the churches around the world today…Amen!

 

            Jesus Christ Morningstar             (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

Blog :  http://www.parchment9.wordpress.com

 

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FRANCIS: WOMEN ARE THE FIRST COMMUNICATORS OF THE RESURRECTION

FRANCIS: WOMEN ARE THE FIRST COMMUNICATORS OF THE RESURRECTION

 

ANGELICO, Fra Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb Fresco, 189 x 164 cm Convento di San Marco, Florence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

Vatican City, 3 April 2013 (VIS)

 

– The Resurrection, the heart of the Christian message, and the two ways it is announced—profession of faith and narration—were the themes with which Pope Francis returned to the catechesis for the Year of Faith in this morning’s general audience.

 

As is becoming his custom, the Holy Father travelled around St. Peter’s Square in the white, open-top Jeep to greet the dozens of thousands of people who want to meet him, many of whom put their babies forward so he can take them in his arms. After his warm greeting of the faithful, the Pope prayed with those present and, after giving them a “good morning!”, he began his catechesis with the quote of the celebrated passage of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain”.

 

“Unfortunately,” he said, “there have often been attempts to obscure the faith in Jesus’ Resurrection and doubts have crept in even among believers themselves. Our faith is ‘watered down’, we might say; not strong faith. Sometimes this has been because of superficiality, sometimes because of indifference, because we are busy with thousands of other things that seem more important than our faith, or even because we have a limited view of life. But it is precisely the Resurrection that offers us the greatest hope because it opens our lives and the life of the world to God’s eternal future, to complete happiness, to the certainty that evil, sin, and death can be conquered. This leads us to living our everyday lives more confidently, to facing them courageously and committedly. Christ’s Resurrection shines new light on our everyday realities. Christ’s Resurrection is our strength!”

 

Moving on to explain the two ways that the truth of the Resurrection is shared in the New Testament, Francis spoke first of professions of faith, that is, of the concise formulas expressing the core of the faith. Such examples can be found in the Letter to the Corinthians or the Letter to the Romans in which St. Paul writes: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). From the Church’s first steps, her faith in the Mystery of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection has been steadfast and clear.”

 

However, the Pope preferred to emphasize the witness that takes the form of a story, recalling above all that, in these types of testimonials, women are the first witnesses. They are the ones who, at dawn, go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body and find the first sign: the empty tomb. They then encounter the divine messenger who tells them: Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One, is not here. He is risen.

 

“The women,” he attested, “are compelled by love and know how to welcome this announcement with faith. They believe and immediately they share [the announcement]. They don’t keep it for themselves but convey it. They can’t contain the joy of knowing that Jesus is alive, the hope that fills their hearts. This should also happen in our lives. We should feel the joy of being Christians! We believe in the Risen One who has conquered evil and death! We must have the courage to ‘go out’ to bring this joy and this light to all the areas of our lives. Christ’s Resurrection is our greatest certainty. It is our most precious treasure! How can we not share this treasure, this certainty, with others? It is not just for us: it is to be proclaimed; to be given to others; to be shared with others. This is precisely our witness.”

 

Francis noted another element of the profession of faith in the New Testament: that only men are recorded as witnesses of the Resurrection, the Apostles but no women. “This is because,” he explained, “according to Jewish law of the time, women and children couldn’t give reliable, credible witness. In the Gospels, however, women have a primary, fundamental role. We can see here an argument in favour of the historical actuality of the Resurrection. If it had been made up, in the context of the time, it would not have been connected to the testimonials of women. The evangelists instead simply narrate what had happened: the women were the first witnesses. This says that God’s choices are not made in accordance with human criteria. The first witnesses of Jesus’ birth are the shepherds, simple and humble people. The first witnesses of the Resurrection are women. This is beautiful. And this is a bit the mission of women, of mothers and women: witnessing to their children and their grandchildren that Jesus is alive. He is the Living One. He is the Risen One. Mothers and women, go forward with this witness! For God, what counts is our hearts.”

 

“This also leads us to reflect on how women, in the Church and in the journey of faith, have had and still today have a unique role in opening doors to the Lord, in following him and conveying his face, because seeing with faith always takes love’s gaze, which is simple and profound. It is more difficult for the Apostles and disciples to believe: not for the women. Peter runs to the tomb, but stops before the empty tomb. Thomas has to touch the wounds on Jesus’ body with his own hands. Even in our faith journeys it is important to know and to feel that God loves us; not to be afraid to love him: faith is professed with the mouth and with the heart, with words and with love.”

 

The Holy Father recalled that, after the apparitions to the women, there were others in which Jesus made himself present in a new way. “He is the Crucified One but his body is glorious. He did not return to his earthly life, but rather in a new condition. At first they don’t recognize him and only through his words and his deeds are their eyes opened. Encountering the Risen One transforms them, gives new strength to their faith, an unshakeable foundation. For us too, there are many signs by which the Risen One makes himself known: Sacred Scripture, the Eucharist, the other Sacraments, charity, these gestures of love bring a ray of the Risen One. Let us be enlightened by Christ’s Resurrection and transformed by its power so that, through us too, the signs of death might give way to signs of life in the world.”

 

At the end, seeing that there were many young persons in the square, the Pope addressed them: “Take this certainty to all, the lord is alive and walks beside us in our lives. This is your mission. Take this hope forward with you. Be anchored to this hope, this anchor that is heaven. Hold tight to the lifeline. Be anchored and carry this hope forward. You, witnesses of Jesus, carry forward the testimony that Jesus is alive and that this will give us hope; it will bring hope to this world that has grown a bit old because of wars, evil, and sin. Young people, go forward!

 

 Blog :  http://www.parchment9.wordpress.com

 

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FRANCIS’ FIRST GENERAL AUDIENCE: FOLLOWING JESUS IS LEARNING TO GO OUT OF OURSELVES

 

Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) -

“I am happy to welcome you to this, my first general audience,” Pope Francis said to the thousands of faithful who filled St. Peter’s Square to participate in the Bishop of Rome’s first catechesis. “With gratitude and veneration,” he continued, “I take up this ‘witness’ from the hands of my beloved predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. After Easter we will return to the catechesis of the Year of Faith. Today I want to focus on Holy Week. We began this week—the heart of the entire liturgical year—during which we accompany Jesus in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, with Palm Sunday.

“But what,” the Pope asked, “does it mean for us to live Holy Week? What does it mean to follow Jesus on his journey to Calvary, toward the Cross and his Resurrection? On his earthly mission, Jesus walked the streets of the Holy Land. He called 12 simple persons to stay with him, sharing his path and continuing his mission … He spoke to everyone, without distinction: to the great and the humble … the powerful and the weak. He brought God’s mercy and forgiveness. He healed, consoled, understood. He gave hope. He brought to all the presence of God who cares for every man and woman as a good father and a good mother cares for each of their children.”

“God,” Francis emphasized, “didn’t wait for us to come to him. It was He who came to us. … Jesus lived the everyday reality of the most common persons. … He cried when he saw Martha and Mary suffering for the death of their brother Lazarus … He also experienced the betrayal of a friend. In Christ, God has given us the assurance that He is with us, in our midst. … Jesus has no home because his home is the people, us ourselves. His mission is to open the doors to God for all, to be the presence of God’s love.”

“During Holy Week we are living the apex … of this plan of love that runs throughout the history of the relationship between God and humanity. Jesus enters into Jerusalem to take the final step in which his entire existence is summed up. He gives himself completely, keeping nothing for himself, not even his life. At the Last Supper, with his friends, He shares the bread and distributes the chalice ‘for us’. The Son of God offers himself to us; puts his Body and his Blood in our hands to be always with us … And in the Garden of the Mount of Olives, as at the trial before Pilate, he makes no resistance, but gives himself.”

“Jesus doesn’t live this love that leads to sacrifice passively or as his fatal destiny. He certainly didn’t hide his deep human turmoil when faced with violent death, but he entrusted himself to the Father with full confidence … to show his love for us. Each one of us can say, ‘Jesus loved me and gave himself up for me’.”

“What does this mean for us? It means that this path is also mine, also yours, also our path. Living Holy Week, following Jesus not only with moved hearts, means learning to come out of ourselves … in order to meet others, in order to go toward the edges of our existence, to take the first steps towards our brothers and sisters, especially those who are farthest from us, those who are forgotten, those who need understanding, consolation, and assistance.”

“Living Holy Week is always going deeper into God’s logic, into the logic of the Cross, which is not first and foremost a logic of sorrow and death but one of love and the self giving that brings life. It is entering into the logic of the Gospel. Following, accompanying Christ, staying with him when he demands that we ‘go out’: out of ourselves, out of a tired and habitual way of living the faith, out of the temptation of locking ourselves in our own schemes that wind up closing the horizon of God’s creative action. God went out of himself in order to come amongst us … to bring us the mercy … that saves and gives hope. And we, if we want to follow and remain with him, cannot be satisfied with staying in the sheep pen with the ninety-nine sheep. We have to ‘go out’, to search for the little lost sheep, the furthest one, with him.”

“Often,” he observed, “we settle for some prayers, a distracted and infrequent Sunday Mass, some act of charity, but we don’t have this courage to ‘go out’ and bring Christ. We are a little like St. Peter. As soon as Jesus talks of his passion, death, and resurrection, of giving himself and love for all, the Apostle takes him aside and scolds him. What Jesus is saying shakes up his plans, seems unacceptable, the safe certainty he had constructed, his idea of the Messiah, in difficulty. And Jesus … addressing some of the harshest words of the Gospel to Peter, says: ‘Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.’ God thinks mercifully. God thinks like a father who awaits the return of his son and goes out to meet him, sees him coming when he is still afar … a sign that he was awaiting him every day from the terrace of his house. God thinks like the Samaritan who doesn’t pass by the unfortunate man, pitying him or looking away, but rather assisting him without asking anything in return, without asking if he was a Jew or a Samaritan, rich or poor.”

“Holy Week,” Francis concluded, “is a time of grace that the Lord gives us to open the doors of our hearts, of our lives, of our parishes—so many closed parishes are a shame—of our movements and associations, to ‘go out’ and meet others, to draw near them and bring them the light and joy of our faith. To always go out with the love and tenderness of God!”

After the catechesis and the summaries in different languages that the Gospel readers gave, the Pope greeted all the groups in Italian. Also in Italian, he addressed, among other groups, the university students participating in the international UNIV Congress sponsored by the Prelature of Opus Dei, thanking them for their prayers and affection for the Pope. “With your presence in the university world, each one of you carries out what St. Josemaria Escriva wished for: ‘It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God and all humankind’.”

Blog :  http://www.parchment9.wordpress.com

The Third Word, “Behold Thy Son,” “Behold Thy Mother” 3

Meditation on the 7 Last Words, by Fr Jason Smith

by Biltrix • Holy Week, Spiritual Lights (Fr Jason Smith) • Tags: 7 Last Words, Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary, religion, seven last words, the passion of Christ

The curses and insults have begun to dwindle. The large crowd is no longer interested in watching Jesus die. The show is over. He shudders and groans, but not much else. Some had hoped that something fantastic would happen—a flash of light and boom, Christ was down from the cross; but no, he just suffers and slowly dies. Even the chief priests and the leaders are now loosing interest. They have gotten the blood they wanted. They have seen Christ’s crucifixion with their own eyes; they have secured his death. They continue to blaspheme him but their bravado wanes. Our Lord suffers with dignity. He does not reply or give them any recognition. Their insults begin to feel hollow and foolish, and they leave one by one.

As they filter away a new group draws near. It consists of three women: “There stood beside the cross of Jesus his mother, his mother’s sister, and Mary of Magdalene. This is a scene that is beautiful, but hard to watch: a mother witnessing her only son tortured to death before her very eyes. How we would like to take Mary by the arm as she approaches her son! She has in her gaze a look of grave concern but without despair. Even the soldiers seem struck by her strength and allow her to stand right next to Jesus.  She gently places her hand on his crucified feet. She would rather be no place else, for this is God’s will, and she knows he has freely chosen it; she is always beside her son, as she is always beside us.

The words of Mary during the apparition at Guadalupe jump to mind, “Am I not here who am your mother? Did I not once hold you on my lap and take care of everything?” Did she say these same words as she looked up into her son’s eyes? They are words that fill us with peace, security, confidence, and certainty—mom is here; surely they did the same for our Lord in his suffering. Perhaps it was the only comfort he received during his three hours of agony.

What a great blessing it is to have Mary as our mother! Everyday we are able to rejoice in the gift of Christ to his Church, to us. Whenever we pray the beads of the Rosary, we are reminded of Christ’s promise upon the cross, “Behold your mother.” She is our mother. Our Lord’s words should always find an echo in our hearts—and not just there—but also in successes and fears, in our triumphs and sufferings, in our security and in our nervousness, whatever it is that we experience as children, our mother is there.

“Am I not hear, your mother?” May we remember this always—both now and at the hour of our death, amen.

Blog :  http://www.parchment9.wordpress.com

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FRANCIS ASKS FOR A HEART THAT FOLLOWS CHRIST ENTHUSIASTICALLY

 

 

The Laity in St Peter’s Square, Vatican City, Rome, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

Vatican City, 24 March 2013 (VIS)

– More than 250 thousand people gathered this morning to attend Palm Sunday Mass, which Pope Francis celebrated in St. Peter’s Square. For the thirteenth consecutive year, the olive trees and branches that adorned St. Peter’s Square and were distributed to the faithful present were a gift from the Puglia region of Italy. The floral design that decorated the altar this year reflected the geography of the five continents: 60,000 olive branches were mixed with grasses and peach leaves, thyme, myrtle, ferns, strawberries, broom, lilies, wallflowers, and celery-leaved buttercups. The two centuries-old olive trees that were placed at the foot of the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul in the square will be planted in the Vatican Gardens after the Mass.

 

The celebration began at 9:15am with a procession of palm branches in which 620 persons—cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, children, and lay persons—participated. Some 2,000 palm branches were brought in from the Ligurian towns of San Remo and Bordighera in Northern Italy, as has been the tradition now for five centuries. The Pope entered the square while the choir and crowd sang the Hosanna. After reaching the foot of the square’s obelisk, the Pope blessed the palms and olive branches of those in the square.

 

The procession then continued to the altar on the Sagrato of the Basilica. The Pope carried one of the three-metre long palm branches, which had been artistically braided so as to represent the Holy Trinity. Concelebrating with the Pope were: Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome; Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; and, Archbishop Filippo Iannone, O. Carm., vice gerent of the diocese of Rome.

 

The choir sang the Kyrie while the Pope venerated and incensed the altar. The Liturgy of the Word included readings from Isaiah and St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. After the Gospel reading of the Passion, proclaimed by three deacons, the Pope’s homily focused on three central aspects: Joy, the Cross, and Youth. His full homily can be read below.

 

As part of the closing rites of the Mass, the Pope prayed the Angelus. Then, re-entering the Vatican walls, the Pope took a long route through the square, greeting those gathered and being especially attentive to the young and the sick.

 

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