Pope Leo XIV urged “feeling and acting with the same compassionate entrails of God” and recalled that this also includes those who do not have “nationality or religion.”
“Sometimes we contain ourselves only to do our duty or consider our neighbor only to whom it is of our circle, who thinks like us, who has the same nationality or religion,” the pontiff lamented during the homily he pronounced this Sunday in the pontifical parish of San Tommaso da Villanova, (Santo Tomás de Villanueva) In the historic center of Castel Gandolfo, where a rest period is elapsed.
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The celebration was attended by the Bishop of Albanian, Mons. Vincenzo Viva, and the mayor of Castel Gandolfo, Alberto de Angelis, as well as numerous faithful who completely filled the small parish. Among the concelebrants was Cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development.
Before the Mass, Leo XIV toured the streets of Castel Gandolfo in one of the two electric and ecological papamobiles that they gave him last Sunday and that he will also use for his next apostolic trips, since they are designed to be able to fit on an plane. The pontiff greeted the hundreds of faithful who congregated in the vicinity of this Church since early morning.
In the homily, the Holy Father reflected on the parable of the good Samaritan in which Jesus “invests the perspective” because she presents us with “a foreigner and heretical who becomes neighbor of that wounded man” and “asks us to do the same.”
“The first look that the parable wants to talk to us is the one that God has had towards us, so that we also learn to have the same eyes, full of love and compassion towards others,” he said.
Thus, he opposed this way of looking “deeper, with an empathy that makes us enter the situation of the other” with the way of seeing “exterior, distracted and hurried” that is not allowed to “affect or question the situation.”
The risk of a “well -off faith”
In this way, I foresee the risk of “a well -off faith” only “ordered in the external observance of the law” and made it clear Christ is “the manifestation of a compassionate god.”
In this way he indicated that today that path that descends from Jerusalem to Jericho – a city that is under sea level – is the path that “travel all those who sink into evil, suffering and poverty”; that of “so many people overwhelmed by the difficulties or injuries for the circumstances of life”; that of all those who “collapse until they get lost and touch back.”
“Scammed and devastated villages, victims of oppressive political systems”
In this list the Pontiff also cited 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.”
He then invited the faithful to ask themselves: “What do we do? Do we see and pass by, or do we let ourselves pierce our hearts like Samaritan?”
In his homily he also asked to return to the “own heart” to discover that “precisely there God has written his law of love.”
He added: “Believing in him and following him as his disciples means letting himself transform so that we can also have the same 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.”
The love revolution
The Holy Father insisted that obeying the Lord’s commandments and becoming “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.”
And he specified in this regard: “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.”
Leo XIV showed that Francisco has often recalled “that God is mercy and compassion” and that Benedict XVI made it clear that the good Samaritan “does not ask how far his obligation of solidarity comes or what are the necessary merits to achieve eternal life.”
Finally, he asked to look at the others “without passing by”, stopping “our busy races.” “This makes us protruded to each other, it generates a real fraternity, demolish walls and fences. And finally love makes its way, becoming stronger than evil and death,” he concluded.
The parish is found in the picturesque Piazza della Libertà de Castel Gandolfo, a town located about 29 kilometers from the Vatican.
The Church was built between 1658 and 1661 on behalf of Pope Alejandro VII, who confided the design to the famous architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It is a smaller church in which there are no more 300 people sitting. Many of the faithful have followed the celebration from abroad. Since 1929, the parish is entrusted to the Salesians, who maintain intense pastoral activity.
The Pope gives a chalice in the parish of Castel Gandolfo
At the end of the celebration, the Pope presented to the parish a gold chalice, which defined as “an instrument of communion.” With this symbolic gesture, he renewed his call to live in communion and to promote a fraternity that translates into concrete gestures in everyday life. “The chalice that I offer to this Church wants to be a sign of unity: it reminds us that, in the Eucharist, the communion we are called to live already testimoniating is forged,” said the pontiff.
Victoria Cardiel
Victoria Cardiel is a journalist specialized in social and religious information issues. Since 2013, he has covered all the news of the Vatican for various media, such as the Spanish news agency Europa Press, or the weekly of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Alfa and Omega.