Pope Francis in his homily at Casa Santa Marta remembered Jesus’ words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
POPE FRANCIS
Of all the things we have gathered, that which we have stored up, legally, we will bring nothing... But, yes, we will bring the embrace of the Lord. Think of your own death: I will die, but when? In the calendar it is not written, but the Lord knows it. Pray to the Lord, 'Lord, prepare my heart to die well, to die in peace, to die with hope.
In addition, he joked saying, 'I do not want this simple sermon to be a funeral announcement!' He explained, life is this way and each person is vulnerable, waiting for when the Lord will call someday.
SUMMARY OF PAPAL HOMILY
(Source: Vatican News)
The Pope centered his homily on how “everything will end” but “He will remain” and he invited the faithful to reflect on the moment of their death.
None of us knows exactly when it will happen; indeed, he noted, we tend to put off that thought believing ourselves eternal, but it is not so.
“We all have this weakness, this vulnerability,” the Pope said and he mentioned an article just published in the Jesuit publication Civiltà Cattolica highlighting the fact that vulnerability is something we all have in common.
We are all equal in vulnerability, he said, and pointing out that at a certain point this vulnerability leads us to death, he commented on how we turn to doctors or to psychologists in search of healing for our bodies or for our minds.
“How many times are we cheated by an illusion?” the Pope said, like the illusion of being eternal.
The certainty of death, he said, is written in the Bible and in the Gospel, but the Lord always presents it to us as an “encounter with Him” and accompanies it with the word “hope.”
“The Lord tells us to be prepared for the encounter, death is an encounter: it is He who comes to visit us, it is He who comes to take us by the hand and take us with Him,” he said.
The Lord, he said, will knock on each of our doors one day.
Therefore, the Pope said, it is necessary to prepare well for that moment.
“My invitation,” he concluded, is to be ready for it: “think about your death, (…) pray for one another and, in order to be able to open the door with trust and confidence when the moment comes,” pray to God saying “Lord, prepare my heart to die well, to die in peace, to die with hope.”
