God is a father who weeps for his erring children, Pope says in Tuesday homily
February 04, 2014
In his homily at a Mass on February 4, Pope Francis said that God is a father who sometimes weeps with love for his children.
The Pope offered his reflections on the day’s Scripture readings, which gave two portraits of loving and weeping fathers. In the first reading, King David mourns his son Absalom, even though Absalom had rebelled against him. David’s soldiers misinterpreted the king’s anxiety, thinking that he was worried about the battle, the Pope observed, when actually he was more worried about his son. “He was a king, he was the leader of the country, but first and foremost he was a father,” the Pope remarked—with “the heart of a father who never disowns his son.”
The Gospel reading told the story of Jairus, the synagogue leader who begged Jesus to heal his daughter. He too was an “important person,” the Pope noted, but “he was not ashamed to throw himself at Jesus’ feet” for the sake of his daughter.
These two stories, the Pope said, reminded him of “the first thing we say about God in the Creed: ‘I believe in God the Father.” God is a loving father who never disowns his children, even when they turn away from him, the Holy Father said. God even weeps for his children, he added, pointing to Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and weeping in the garden of Gethsemane.
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