By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Christians are called to be more like Mary: generous and loving servants of the Lord, Pope Francis said.
“Sadly, if we look around us, we realize that the presumption that we can be ‘like God,’ which led to the first sin, continues to wound our human family,” he said, celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
“Neither love nor happiness can arise from this presumption of self-sufficiency. Those who see the rejection of any stable and lasting bond in life as progress do not grant freedom,” he said in his homily.
Celebrating the Mass with the College of Cardinals, including the 21 new cardinals he elevated to the college the day before, the pope highlighted Mary’s beauty and pure heart, “a heart that is free from sin, docile to the working of the Holy Spirit and ready to offer to God, out of love, the full submission of intellect and will.”
“There is the risk, however, of thinking that Mary’s beauty is somehow remote, out of reach, unattainable,” he said. But everyone has received this beauty as a gift in baptism, “when we were freed from sin and became sons and daughters of God.”
“Like the Virgin Mary, we are called to cultivate this beauty with a filial, spousal and maternal love” and to be “grateful for what we have received and generous in what we give back,” he said.
Unfortunately, he said, today there are those who “deprive fathers and mothers of respect, those who do not want children, those who reduce others to mere objects or treat them as nuisances, those who consider sharing with others a waste, and solidarity an impoverishment.”
Such attitudes “cannot spread joy or build a future,” the pope said.
“What is the use of having a full bank account, a comfortable home, unreal virtual relationships, if our hearts remain cold, empty and closed?” he asked. “What is the use of achieving great financial growth in privileged countries if half the world is starving or ravaged by war, and the others look on with indifference? What is the use of traveling around the world if every encounter is reduced to a passing impression or a photograph that no one will remember in a few days or months?”
Instead, the pope said, “May we be men and women who are ready to say, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Yes,’ … not just with our words, but above all by our actions, ever ready to make room for the Lord in our plans and aspirations, eager to embrace with maternal tenderness the brothers and sisters we encounter on our way.”
“Let us look to Mary Immaculate and ask her to conquer us through her loving heart. May she convert us and make us a community in which filial, spousal and maternal love may be a rule and criterion of life,” he said.
“Only then will families be united, will spouses truly share everything, will parents be physically present and close to their children,” he said.
God chose Mary, he chose a woman, to be “a companion for his plan of salvation,” the pope said. “There is no salvation without women because the church, too, is woman.”
“The Immaculate Virgin is not a myth, an abstract doctrine or an impossible ideal. She is the model of a beautiful and concrete project” that can change the world, he said.
“As we imitate her, may all of us, by God’s grace, help to change our world for the better,” Pope Francis said.
Before praying the Angelus at noon with visitors gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the pope asked the faithful that “as the opening of the Holy Door of the Jubilee approaches, let us open the doors of the heart and the mind to the Lord Jesus, born of Mary Immaculate, and let us implore the intercession of Mary.”
He encouraged Catholics to go to confession Dec. 8 or during the coming week “to open your heart. The Lord forgives everything, everything, everything, and that way we will be happier in the hands of Mary.”
