Read here the homily of the Mass that Pope Leo XIV celebrated this Sunday in Castel Gandolfo

Pope Leo XIV celebrated a Mass on the Pontifical Parish of San Tommaso da Villanova, in the historic center of Castel Gandolfo, where a period of rest is taking place. Read here the full homily:

Brothers and sisters: I share with you the joy of celebrating this Eucharist and I want to greet everyone present, the parish community, priests, religious and religious, civil and military authorities. We have heard in the Gospel this Sunday one of the most beautiful and suggestive parables narrated by Jesus: the parable of the good Samaritan (Lk 10,25-37).

This story continues to challenge us today, question our life, it shakes the tranquility of our numb or distracted consciences and causes us against the risk of a well -off faith, ordered in the outer observance of the law, but unable to feel and act with the same compassionate entrails of God.

Compassion, in effect, is in the center of the parable. And if we consider that in the evangelical account this compassion is described through the actions of the Samaritan, the first thing that the passage underlines is the look.

In fact, in front of an injured man who is on the edge of the road after having been stripped by some bandits, the priest and the Levite says: “He saw him and followed his way” (v. 32); of the Samaritan, on the other hand, the Gospel states: “He saw and moved” (v. 33).

Dear brothers and sisters, the look makes the difference, because it expresses what we have in the heart: you can see and pass by or see and feel compassion. There is a way of seeing exterior, distracted and hurried, a way of looking to pretend that it is not seen, that is, without allowing us to affect or challenge the situation; And there is a way of seeing, on the other hand, with the eyes of the heart, with a deeper look, with an empathy that makes us enter the situation of the other, it makes us participate internally, it touches us, it shakes us, interrogates our life and our responsibility.

The first look that the parable wants to talk to us is one that God has had towards us, so that we also learn to have their eyes, full of love and compassion towards others.

The good Samaritan, in effect, is above all the image of Jesus, the eternal Son that the Father sent in history precisely because he has looked at humanity without passing by; With eyes, heart and entrails of shock and compassion.

Just as that man of the Gospel went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, humanity descended to the abysses of death and, even today, he must often deal with the darkness of evil, with suffering, with poverty and with the absurdity of death. But God has looked at us with compassion, he himself has wanted to go our path, descended in the midst of us and, in Jesus, good Samaritan, he has come to heal our wounds, spilling over us the oil of his love and his mercy.

Pope Francis has often reminded us that God is mercy and compassion, and has affirmed that Jesus “is the compassion of the Father towards us” (Angelus, July 14, 2019). He is the good Samaritan who came to meet us.

Saint Augustine says that “the Lord and God himself wanted to be called our neighbor, for Jesus Christ Our Lord symbolized in which he helped the man lying on the road, wounded, semi -dividing and abandoned by the thieves” (the Christian doctrine, I, 33). We understand, then, why the parable also challenges each of us, by the fact that Christ is a manifestation of a compassionate God.

Believing in him and following him as his disciples means being transformed so that we can also have their feelings; A heart that is moved, a look that sees and does not pass by, two hands that help and relieve the wounds, the strong shoulders that take care of who need.

Today’s first reading, making us listen to Moses’ words, tells us that obeying the Lord’s commandments and becoming him does not mean multiplying external acts, but, on the contrary, it is about returning to one’s heart to discover that precisely there God has written his law of love.

If in the intimate of our life we discover that Christ, as a good Samaritan, loves us and takes care of us, we are also driven to love in the same way and we will be compassionate like him.

Healed and loved by Christ, we also become signs of his love and his compassion in the world. Brothers and sisters, today this revolution of love is needed. Today, that path that descends from Jerusalem to Jericho – a city that is under sea level – is the path that all those who sink into evil, suffering and poverty; It is the path of so many people overwhelmed by difficulties or injuries due to the circumstances of life; It is the path of all those who “collapse” until they get lost and play back; It is the path of so many stripped, scammed and razed peoples, victims of oppressive political systems, of an economy that forces them to poverty, of the war that kills their dreams and their lives.

What do we do? Do we see and pass by, or do we let ourselves pierce our hearts like Samaritan? Sometimes we content only with doing our duty or we consider our neighbor only to whom it is from our circle, whom he thinks like us, to whom he has the same nationality or religion; But Jesus invests the perspective by presenting us with a Samaritan, a foreigner and heretical who becomes neighbor of that injured man. And he asks us to do the same.

The Samaritan, “Benedict XVI wrote,” “he does not ask how far his obligation to solidarity comes or what are the necessary merits to achieve eternal life. Something very different happens: his heart is broken (…). If the question had been: “Is the Samaritan my neighbor?”, Given the situation, the answer would have been a “no” rather resounding.

But Jesus turns the question around: the Samaritan, the stranger, becomes close and shows me that I, in the intimate of myself, must learn from within to be neighbor and that the answer is already within me. I have to become a person who loves, an open heart person who is moved to the need of the other ”(Jesus of Nazareth, 237-238). See without passing by, stop our busy races, let the life of the other, whoever, with their needs and sufferings, break my heart.

This makes us protected each other, generates a real fraternity, demolishes walls and fences. And finally love makes its way, becoming stronger than evil and death. Dear friends, let’s contemplate Christ good Samaritan and continue to listen today to his voice that tells each of us: “Go and do the same” (v. 37).