By Linda Bordoni
Pope Francis celebrated Palm Sunday, reminding the faithful of God’s “providential and merciful” embrace that helps us “not to give in to despair or close ourselves off in bitterness” in times of sorrow and frailty.
In a text, distributed to journalists by the Holy See Press Office, the Pope reflected on the account of the Lord’s Passion according to Luke in which we see a defenceless and humiliated Jesus walk towards the cross “with the feelings and the heart of a child clinging to his father’s neck, fragile in the flesh, but strong in trusting abandonment, until he fell asleep, in death, in the Father’s arms.”
“These are feelings that the liturgy calls us to contemplate and make our own,” the Pope said, noting that “We all have sorrows, physical or moral, and faith helps us not to give in to despair, not to close ourselves off in bitterness, but to face them, feeling enveloped, like Jesus, by the providential and merciful embrace of the Father.”
And before raising his prayers for those affected by war, poverty or natural disasters – and with a special thought for the families and victims of the collapse of a building in Santo Domingo – the Holy Father took the occasion to thank the faithful for their continued prayers as he recovers from pneumonia:
“Sisters and brothers, I thank you very much for your prayers,” he said, “At this time of physical weakness, they help me to feel God’s closeness, compassion and tenderness even more. I, too, am praying for you, and I ask you to entrust all those who suffer to the Lord together with me. – Vatican News
