does not say: “If your neighbor wants to be first, let him be the servant!” We have to be careful to avoid judgmental looks and renew our belief in the transforming look to which Jesus invites us.
This caring for others out of love is not about being servile. Rather, it means putting the question of our brothers and sisters at the center. Service always looks to their faces, touches their flesh, senses their closeness, and even, in some cases, “suffers” that closeness and tries to help them. Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.
God’s holy and faithful people in Cuba is a people with a taste for celebrations, for friendship, for beautiful things. It is a people which marches with songs of praise. It is a people which has its wounds, like every other people, yet knows how to stand up with open arms, to keep walking in hope, because it has a vocation of grandeur. These were the seeds sown by your forebears. Today I ask you to care for this vocation of yours, to care for these gifts which God has given you, but above all I invite you to care for and be at the service of the frailty of your brothers and sisters. Do not neglect them for plans which can be seductive but are unconcerned about the face of the person beside you. We know, we are witnesses of the incomparable power of the Resurrection, which “everywhere calls forth the seeds of a new world” (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 276, 278).
Let us not forget the Good News we have heard today: the importance of a people, a nation, and the importance of individuals, which is always based on how they seek to serve their vulnerable brothers and sisters. Here we encounter one of the fruits of a true humanity.
Because, dear brothers and sisters: “whoever does not live to serve, does not ‘serve’ to live.”
III
Attentive to the Needs of Others
Angelus, Homily of Pope Francis
Plaza de la Revolución, Havana, Cuba
Sunday, September 20, 2015
I thank Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, archbishop of Havana, for his fraternal words, and I greet all my brother bishops, priests, religious, and lay faithful. I also greet the President and all the authorities present.
We have heard in the Gospel how the disciples were afraid to question Jesus when he spoke to them about his passion and death. He frightened them; they could not grasp the thought of seeing Jesus suffer on the cross. We too are tempted to flee from our own crosses and those of others, to withdraw from those who suffer. In concluding this Holy Mass, in which Jesus has once more given himself to us in his body and blood, let us now lift our gaze to the Virgin Mary, our Mother. We ask her to teach us to stand beside the cross of our brothers and sisters who suffer. To learn to see Jesus in every person bent low on the path of life, in all our brothers and sisters who hunger or thirst, who are naked or in prison or sick. With Mary our Mother, on the cross we can see who is truly “the greatest” and what it means to stand beside the Lord and to share in his glory.
Let us learn from Mary to keep our hearts awake and attentive to the needs of others. As the wedding feast of Cana teaches us, let us be concerned for the little details of life, and let us not tire of praying for one another, so that no one will lack the new wine of love, the joy which Jesus brings us.
At this time I feel bound to direct my thoughts to the beloved land of Colombia, “conscious of the crucial importance of the present moment when, with renewed effort and inspired by hope, its sons and daughters are seeking to build a peaceful society.” May the blood shed by thousands of innocent people during long decades of armed conflict, united to that of the Lord Jesus Christ crucified, sustain all the efforts being made, also here on this beautiful island, to achieve definitive reconciliation. Thus may the long night of pain and violence, with the support of all Colombians, become an unending day of concord, justice, fraternity, and love, in respect for institutions and for national and international law, so that there may be lasting peace. Please, we do not have the right to allow ourselves yet another failure on this path of peace and reconciliation. Thank you, Mr. President, for all that you do in this work of reconciliation.
I ask you now to join in praying to Mary, that we may place all our concerns and hopes before the heart of Christ. We pray to her in a special way for those who have lost hope and find no reasons to keep fighting and for those who suffer from injustice, abandonment, and loneliness. We pray for the elderly, the infirm, children, and young people, for all families experiencing difficulty, that Mary may dry their tears, comfort them with a mother’s love, and restore their hope and joy. Holy Mother, I commend to you these your sons and daughters in Cuba. May you never abandon them!
After the Final Blessing
And I ask you, please, not to forget to pray for me. Thank you.
IV
Leaving Everything to Follow Jesus
Vespers with Priests, Men and Women Religious, and Seminarians
Homily of Pope Francis
Cathedral, Havana, Cuba
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Unprepared Remarks by the Holy Father
Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino spoke to us about poverty and Sister Yaileny (Sister Yaileny Ponce Torres, D.C.) spoke to us about the little ones: “They are all children.” I had prepared a homily to give now, based on the biblical texts, but when prophets speak — every priest is a prophet, all the baptized are prophets, every consecrated person is a prophet — then we should listen to them. So I’m going to give the homily to Cardinal Jaime so that he can get it to you and you can make it known. Later you can meditate on it. And now let’s talk a little about what these two prophets said.
Cardinal Jaime happened to say a very uncomfortable word, an extremely uncomfortable word, one which goes against the whole “cultural” structure of our world. He said “poverty,” and he repeated it several times. I think the Lord wanted us to keep hearing it and to receive it in our hearts. The spirit of the world doesn’t know this word, doesn’t like it, hides it — not for shame but for scorn. And if it has to sin and offend God in order to avoid poverty, then that’s what it does. The spirit of the world does not love the way of the Son of God, who emptied himself, became poor, became nothing, abased himself in order to be one of us.
Poverty frightened that generous young man who had kept all the commandments, and so when Jesus told him, “Go, sell all that you have and give it to the poor,” he was saddened. He was afraid of poverty. We are always trying to hide poverty, perhaps with good reason, but I’m talking about hiding it in our hearts. It is our duty to know how to administer our goods, for they are a gift from God. But when these goods enter your heart and begin to take over your life, that’s where you can get lost. Then you are no longer like Jesus. Then you have your security where the sad young man had his, the one who went away sad.
For you, priests, consecrated men and women, I think what St. Ignatius said could be useful to you (and this is not just family propaganda here!). He said that poverty was the wall and the mother of consecrated life: the “mother” because it gives birth to greater confidence in God, and the “wall” because it protects us from all worldliness. How many ruined souls there are! Generous souls, like that of the sad young man, they started out well, then gradually became attached to the love of this wealthy worldliness and ended up badly. They ended up mediocre. They ended up without love because wealth impoverishes us, in a bad way. It takes away the best that we have, and strips us of the only wealth which is truly worthwhile, so that we put our security in something else.
The spirit of poverty, the spirit of detachment, the spirit of leaving everything behind in order to follow Jesus, this leaving everything is not something I am inventing. It appears frequently in the Gospel — in the calling of the first ones who left their