“The Church is brokenhearted at the cry of pain rising from places devastated by war, especially Ukraine, Iran, Israel and Gaza.” Leo XIV said this at the end of the general audience on Wednesday, during the greetings to the Italian-speaking faithful, with a heartfelt plea for peace:
“We must never get used to war! Indeed, the temptation to have recourse to powerful and sophisticated weapons needs to be rejected.”
The Pope’s appeal: “Today, when every kind of weapon produced by modern science is used in war, the savagery of war threatens to lead the combatants to barbarities far surpassing those of former ages. For this reason, in the name of human dignity and international law, I reiterate to those in positions of responsibility the frequent warning of Pope Francis: War is always a defeat! And that of Pope Pius XII: Nothing is lost with peace. Everything may be lost with war.”
Say ‘no’ to a “war among the poor.” The Church is a “house of mercy”, “where the sick and the poor gather and where the Lord comes to heal and give hope.”
In his catechesis, the Pope used this image to illustrate situations in which we feel “blocked and stuck in a dead end.” “At times, in fact, it seems to be pointless to continue to hope; we become resigned and no longer have the desire to fight”, said Leo XIV, for whom “what paralyzes us, very often, is disappointment. We feel discouraged and risk falling into apathy.” “Jesus asks the paralytic a question that may seem superfluous: ‘Do you want to be well?’”. “Instead, it is a necessary question, because when one is stuck for so many years, even the will to heal may fade”, the Pontiff observed:
“Sometimes we prefer to remain in the condition of sickness, forcing others to take care of us. It is sometimes also an excuse for not deciding what to do with our lives.”
“Jesus instead takes this man back to his truest and deepest desire”, the Pope said, explaining the meaning of the Gospel parable”: “Indeed, this man replies in a more articulate way to Jesus’ question, revealing his true vision of life. He says first of all that he has no-one to immerse him in the pool: so he is not to blame, but the others who do not take care of him. This attitude becomes the pretext for avoiding responsibility.” “But is it really true that he had no-one to help him?”, the Pope asked, and went on to quote Saint Augustine’s enlightening answer: “Truly he had need of a ‘man’ to his healing, but that ‘man’ one who is also God. … He came, then, the Man who was needed: why should the healing be delayed?”
“Let us ask the Lord for the gift of understanding where our life is stuck”,
the Pope said in his final appeal: “Let us try to give voice to our desire to be healed. And let us pray for all those who feel paralyzed, who do not see a way out. Let us ask to return to dwell in the Heart of Christ, which is the true house of mercy!” The protagonist of the Gospel parable tells Jesus that
“when he tries to immerse himself in the pool, there is always someone who arrives before him.” “This man is expressing a fatalistic view of life”, the Pope observed. “We think that things happen to us because we are not fortunate, because destiny is against us. This man is discouraged. He feels defeated in the struggle of life.” Instead, “Jesus helps him to discover that his life is also in his hands. He invites him to get up, to raise himself up from his chronic situation, and to take his stretcher.” “That mat is not to be left or thrown away”, remarked Pope Leo: “it represents his past of sickness, his history. Until that moment, the past had blocked him; it had forced him to lie like a dead man. Now it is he who can take that mat and carry it wherever he wishes: he can decide what to make of his history! It is a matter of walking, taking responsibility for choosing what road to take. And this is thanks to Jesus!”
