It is the shocking scene of the twenty-one Copts slaughtered on a beach in Libya by the militiamen of the Islamic State that inspires the Pope’s reflection in the Tuesday, december 11 Mass in Santa Marta. Francis recalls that dramatic moment, one of the worst in the propaganda of the jihadist horror, to testify that even in the worst moments there is a “consolation” that is a gift from God and that is “the usual state of the Christian”.
Consolation is a certainty, the Pontiff affirms in his homily reported by Vatican News, as old as the first persecutions of the martyrs of the Colosseum - who entered “singing” in the arena that would see their end. And even “the martyrs of today - I think of the Coptic workers on the beach of Libya, slaughtered – who died saying “Jesus, Jesus!””, the Pontiff says. “There is a consolation inside; a joy even in the moment of martyrdom. The normal state of the Christian must be consolation, which is not the same as optimism, no: optimism is something else. But consolation, that positive ground... We speak of luminous, positive people: the positivity, the luminosity of the Christian is consolation”, the Pope affirms.
This consolation, he explains, comes from the tenderness of God, similar to that of mothers who caress the child when they cry. The prophet Isaiah, in the passage proposed by today’s liturgy, affirms that: “He tends his flock like a shepherd and gathers the lambs in his arm and carries them close to his chest, to his heart and gently leads the mother sheep with their young”.
“This is the Lord’s way of consoling: with tenderness”, Pope Bergoglio remarks. “Tenderness consoles. When the child cries, the mothers caress and reassure him with tenderness: a word that today’s world, in fact, has erased from the dictionary. Tenderness”.
That of tenderness, Francis observes, “is a language that the prophets of misfortune do not know... it is a word erased by all the vices that drive us away from the Lord: clerical vices, vices of Christians who “do not want to move”, who are lukewarm... Tenderness is frightening”.
And we Christians too, the Pope notes, are a bit “attached to this spiritual pessimism”. For fear of “risking” failing, we often “resist consolation”, as if “we were safer in the turbulent waters of problems”. “We bet on desolation, on problems, on defeat” and the Lord works so hard yet he finds resistance.
Pope Francis concretizes his thought with an example, that of the children that many parents bring to him during the public audiences for a blessing. “Some children see me and scream, they begin to cry - he says - because, seeing him dressed in white, they think of the doctor and the nurse, who gave him the stings for the vaccines and they think: “No, not another one”! We are a bit like that too, but the Lord says: “Console! Console my people””.
So in this time of Advent that prepares for Christmas let ourselves be “consoled” by God, the Pope exhorts. We shall not be afraid and we shall ask for the grace “that I too prepare myself for Christmas at least with peace: peace of heart, peace of Your presence, peace that Your caresses give”. “But I am such a sinner...”. Yes, but what does the Gospel of today tell us? That the Lord who consoles like the shepherd, if he loses one of his own he goes to look for it, like that man who has a hundred sheep and one of them is lost: he goes to look for her. So does the Lord with each of us. I don’t want peace, I resist peace, I resist consolation... but He is at the door. He knocks for us to open our hearts and let ourselves be consoled and to let ourselves be put at peace. And he does so with tenderness: he knocks with caresses”.
