It’s not in the News
Dear Gentle Readers
As
we go though our day today let us pause for a moment and pray for the
Missionaries of Charity, and for the four women who lost their lives for their
faith and for their love of God and of their brothers and sisters.
Let
us pray for peace, let us pray for all of those who suffer and die for the
crime of just trying to make this world a better place. Let us pray for
ourselves that we are never indifferent to the plight of the poor, of the victimized,
of those lost voices that don’t get a spot in the news cycle of politicians
insulting each other and celebrity scandals…..
Take
Care and God Bless
Good
Enough
Pope: murdered missionaries
of charity are martyrs of indifference
On Sunday
Pope Francis lamented the world’s indifference to the recent killing of four
Missionaries of Charity, calling them the ‘martyrs of today’ and asking that
Bl. Mother Teresa intercede in bringing peace.
“I
express my closeness to the Missionaries of Charity for the great loss that
affected them two days ago with the killing of four religious in Aden, Yemen,
where they assisted the elderly,” the Pope said March 6.
The sisters
who were killed “are the martyrs of today…they gave their blood for the Church,
(yet) they are not in the papers, they are not news,” he said.
Francis
lamented that the sisters are not only the victims of their killers, but “also
of the indifference of this globalization of indifference, which doesn't care.”
He prayed
for the sisters and the other 12 people killed in the attack, as well as their
families, asking that Mother Teresa would accompany her “martyr daughters of
charity” in paradise, and intercede in obtaining peace “and the sacred respect
of human life.”
Pope Francis’
spoke to pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his March 6 Angelus
address, just two days after a March 4 attack at a Missionaries of Charity
convent and nursing home for the elderly and disabled persons in Aden, the
provisional capital of Yemen, left 16 dead.
Four of the
victims were sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, the community founded by
Blessed Mother Teresa. Other victims of the attack included volunteers at the
home, at least five of whom were Ethiopian. Many were Yemenis. The nursing home
had around 80 residents, who were unharmed.
Fr. Tom
Uzhunnalil, a Salesian priest from India who had been staying with the sisters
since his church was attacked and burned last September, has been missing since
the attack, Agenzia Fides reports. Sources close to CNA say the priest was
abducted from the convent chapel.
In his
address, Pope Francis pointed to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which was
recounted in the day’s Gospel from Luke. A better name for the parable could be
that of “the merciful Father,” the Pope said, noting how the father in the
passage is “a man always ready to forgive and who hopes against all hope.”
In
tolerating the younger son’s decision to leave home when he could have easily
opposed, the father is respecting his son’s freedom, as God does with us,
Francis explained.
“God lets us
be free, even to make mistakes, because in creating us he gave us the great
gift of freedom,” he said.
However, the
father continues to carry the younger son in his heart, “faithfully awaiting
his return,” Francis said, explaining that the father has the same attitude of
tenderness toward his older son.
He reminds
the older son not only of how they have been together and what they have in
common, but he also expresses the need for the older son to welcome his brother
with joy.
Francis then
pointed to a third, “hidden son” in the parable, describing him as the one who
“did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave.”
This
“Servant-Son,” Jesus, is the extension of God’s hand and heart, the Pope said,
explaining that he is the one who welcomed the prodigal son, prepared his
“banquet of forgiveness” and taught us to be merciful like the father.
Turning to
the image of the father in the parable, Pope Francis said that he reveals the
heart of God, and shows us “the merciful Father who in Jesus loves us beyond
all measure, always waiting for our conversion each time we err.”
Just like
the father in the parable, God continues to consider us his children even when
we are lost, the Pope said, explaining that even the most serious mistakes we
make “don't scratch the fidelity of his love.”
The
Sacrament of Confession, he said, is our opportunity to start again, and is the
place where God welcomes us and “restores to us the dignity of his children.”
Pope Francis
closed his address with an appeal to intensify their path of interior
conversion throughout the rest of Lent.
“Let us
allow ourselves to be reached by the gaze of our father, full of love, and
return to him with our whole heart, rejecting any compromise with sin,” he
said.
After
leading pilgrims in the traditional Marian prayer, Francis gave a shout out to
the new pilot program “Humanitarian Corridors,” aimed at helping refugees.
An
joint-ecumenical initiative of the Sant'Egidio Community, the Federation of
Protestant Churches in Italy, the Italian government and the Waldensian and
Methodist churches, the projects provides aid and safe passage to those fleeing
war and violence.
The first
100 out of the 1,000 refugees who will come from camps in Lebanon, Morocco and
Ethiopia, have already transferred to Italy. Among them are sick children,
disabled persons, elderly and widows of war with children.
