Pope at Palm Sunday Mass: Love the abandoned Christ, love Christ in the abandoned
April 03, 2023
» Continue to this story on Vatican Press Office
CWN Editor's Note: On April 2, Pope Francis, battling a hoarse voice, presided at Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square. Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, vice dean of the College of Cardinals, was the principal celebrant.
“Brothers and sisters, today let us implore this grace: to love Jesus in his abandonment and to love Jesus in the abandoned all around us,” the Pope preached. “God has not left us alone; let us care, then, for those who feel alone and abandoned. Then, and only then, will we be of one mind and heart with the one who, for our sake, ‘emptied himself’ (Phil 2:7).”
Among the abandoned, said the Pope, are “unborn children, the elderly who live alone: they could perhaps be your father or mother, your grandfather or grandmother, left alone in retirement homes, the sick whom no one visits, the disabled who are ignored, and the young burdened by great interior emptiness, with no one prepared to listen to their cry of pain.”
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Apr. 03, 2023 6:38 PM ET USA
Psalm 22:1 says: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Many stop there without reading the rest of the psalm. Others read on, but hardly anyone goes all the way: "Let all the seed of Israel fear him: because he hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. Neither hath he turned away his face from me: and when I cried to him he heard me" (22:24). One biblical commentary explained the reason why Christ cited the beginning of that psalm: to remind them of the rest of it.
