Pope at audience: “Let us pray for the mothers of the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who have fallen during the war”

“During this Holy Week of the Passion of Christ, commemorating his unjust death, I remember in a special way all the victims of war crimes and, as I invite you to pray for them, let us lift up a prayer to God so that everyone’s heart might be converted”. This is Pope Francis' appeal at the closing of today's audience, during his salutations to the Italian-speaking faithful that, as usual, wrap up the Wednesday meeting in St. Peter's Square.

“Looking at Mary, Our Lady, in front of the Cross, my thought goes out to the mothers: to the mothers of the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who have fallen during the war. They are the mothers whose sons have died. Let us pray for these mothers. And let us not forget to pray for the martyred Ukraine”, Francis continued.

“Why are we so attached to war, to treating each other badly?”, wondered Francis in the catechesis of today's audience, delivered in St. Peter's Square and dedicated to “The Crucifix: Source of Hope.” “Where is your hope?”, the Pope asked the faithful: “Is your hope alive, or have you sealed it up there, or have you put it there in a drawer, like a memory? Does your hope push you to walk or is it a romantic memory, as if it is something that doesn’t exist?”.
“It is not possible to live without hope”,
Francis reiterated: “this is how God’s hope germinates. It is born and reborn in the black holes of our disappointed expectations”, he assured regarding “that everyday virtue, that silent, humble virtue, but also that virtue that keeps us on our feet”. “How many sad people there are!” exclaimed the Pope, who narrated off-text: “When I could go out onto the streets in another diocese, I used to like watching people’s faces. How many sad faces! Sad people, people talking to themselves, people walking alone with their cell phones, but without peace”.

“It takes a bit of hope to be healed from the sadness that makes us ill, to be healed from the bitterness with which we pollute the Church and world”.

“We find it difficult to bare ourselves, to be truthful. We always try to cover the truth because we do not like it”, he warned:

“sometimes, we are so used to telling ourselves lies that we live with the lies as if they are truth, and we end up being poisoned by our own falsity”.

“We clothe ourselves with outward appearances that we look for and take good care of, masks to disguise ourselves and to appear better than we are, Francis explained: “This is a bit like the “make-up” attitude: interior make-up, to seem better than others. We think it is important to show off, to appear like this so others will speak well of us. And we adorn ourselves with appearances, we adorn ourselves with appearances, with unnecessary things. But we do not find peace this way. Then the make-up goes away and you look at yourself in the mirror with the ugly, but true, face you have – the one that God loves – not the one with make-up on”. “Stripped of everything, Jesus reminds us that hope is reborn by being truthful about ourselves”, the Pope noted:
“Look at your closet, the closet of your soul, and do some cleaning there!”,
the exhortation in view of Easter: “How many useless things you have, how many stupid illusions. Let us return to simplicity, to things that are true, that don’t need to be made-up”, he said, showing the way: “Today, when everything is complex and we risk losing a sense of meaning, we need simplicity, we need to rediscover the value of sobriety, the value of renunciation, to clean up what is polluting our hearts and makes them sad”, Francis’ thesis: “Each one of us can think of something useless that we can free ourselves from to find ourselves again”, is his advice.

“Jesus is wounded in body and in soul”, and “we too are wounded”, continued Francis: “who isn’t in life? And they are often hidden wounds we hide out of embarrassment. Who does not bear the scars of past choices, of misunderstandings, of sorrows that remain inside and are difficult to overcome? But also of wrongs suffered, sharp words, unmerciful judgements?”. “God does not hide the wounds that pierced his body and soul, from our eyes”, the Pope noted: “He shows them so we can see that a new passage can be opened with Easter: to make holes of lights out of our own wounds”.

“The point is not whether we are wounded a little or a lot in life, the point is what to do with my wounds –the little ones, the big ones, the ones that leave their mark forever on my body, on my soul”,

Francis argued:  “No, Father, I don’t have any wounds” – “Be careful, think twice before saying this” what do you do with your wounds, with the ones only you know about? You can allow them to infect you with resentment and sadness, or I can instead unite them to those of Jesus, so that my wounds too might become luminous.
“Think of how many young people, how many young people, do not tolerate their own wounds and look for a way of salvation in suicide”,
in the final part of the catechesis, the appeal: “Today, in our cities, so many young people see no other way out, they have no hope, and prefer to get high using drugs, to forget…poor people. Think about this”, the Pope pleaded: “And you, what is the drug you use to hide your wounds?”, is the question for each one of us. “Our wounds can become springs of hope when, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves or hiding them, we dry the tears shed by others”, Francis assured: when, instead of nourishing resentment for what was robbed of us, we take care of what others are lacking; when, instead of dwelling on ourselves, we bend over those who suffer; when, instead of being thirsty for love, we quench the thirst of those in need of us. For it is only if we stop thinking of ourselves, that we will find ourselves again. But if we continue to think of ourselves, we will not find ourselves anymore”.
M.Michela Nicolais