“Let us not forget to pray for peace.” The Pope asked this at the end of today’s audience, during his greetings to the Italian-speaking faithful. “We pray for the peoples who are victims of war,” Francis continued: “war is always a defeat, always. Let’s think about the tormented Ukraine, which suffers so much. Let’s think about the inhabitants of Palestine and Israel who are at war. Let’s think about the Rohingya, about Myanmar and ask for peace. We ask for true peace for these peoples and for the whole world.” “Unfortunately today the investments that give the most income are the weapons factories”, the final complaint: “Terrible, earning with death. We ask for peace, for peace to continue.” The Pope had also made a similar appeal to the Polish pilgrims, greeted shortly before: “Pray for the Church, for the homeland, for peace in Ukraine and in the Middle East. May Mary, whom Pius XI established as Queen for all of Poland one hundred years ago, support and guide you.”
“Today, May 1st, with the whole Church we commemorate Saint Joseph the Worker and begin the Marian month”. The Pope said this at the end of today’s audience, during his greetings to the Italian-speaking faithful. “To each of you – he continued – I would like to propose the Holy Family of Nazareth as a model of domestic community: community of life, work and love”. “Today we remember in a particular way Saint Joseph, who promptly accepted God’s plans in his life”, the greeting to the German-speaking pilgrims: “May his example help us to be firm in the faith, which gives us the certainty that the Lord always accompanies us.” “Saint Joseph the Worker – the wish to the Portuguese-speaking faithful – inspires you to mark each day with a special commitment: prayer”.
“Faith is the virtue that makes the Christian”. The Pope explained this in the catechesis of today’s audience, delivered in the Paul VI Hall and dedicated to the virtue of faith. “Because being Christian – he specified – is not first of all accepting a culture, with the values that accompany it, but welcoming and safeguarding a bond: me and God; my person and the lovable face of Jesus. This bond is what makes us Christians.” In this regard, the Pope cited the evangelical episode in which the disciples of Jesus are crossing the lake and are surprised by the storm: “They think they can get by with the strength of their arms, with the resources of experience, but the boat starts to fill up with water and panic. They don’t realize that they have the solution before their eyes: Jesus is there with them on the boat, in the middle of the storm, and he is sleeping. When they finally wake him up, scared and also angry because he lets them die, Jesus rebukes them: ‘Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?’”
“The great enemy of faith is not intelligence, it is not reason, as, alas, someone continues to obsessively repeat, but it is fear”. The Pope clarified this in the catechesis of today’s audience, delivered in the Paul VI Hall and dedicated to the virtue of faith. “For this reason, faith is the first gift to be welcomed in Christian life,” Francis explained: “a gift that must be welcomed and asked for daily, so that it is renewed in us. Apparently it is a small gift, yet it is the essential one.” “When they took us to the baptismal font – the Pope recalled – our parents, after announcing the name they had chosen for us, were asked by the priest: ‘What do you ask of the Church of God?’. And the parents replied: ‘Faith, baptism!’”. “For a Christian parent, aware of the grace that has been given to him, that is the gift to ask for his child too: faith”, commented the Pope: “With it a parent knows that, despite the trials of life , his son will not drown in fear. The enemy is fear. He also knows that when he ceases to have a parent on this earth, he will continue to have a Father God in heaven who will never abandon him. Our love is so fragile, only God’s love overcomes death.” “Of course, faith is not everyone’s, and even we, who are believers, often realize we have only a small supply of it,” Francis pointed out: “Jesus can often reproach us, as he did with his disciples, for being men of little faith. But it is the happiest gift, the only virtue that we are allowed to envy. Because those who have faith are inhabited by a strength that is not only human; in fact, faith triggers grace in us and opens the mind to the mystery of God. As Jesus once said: ‘If you had faith as much as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree: ‘Be uprooted and go and plant yourself in the sea, and it would obey you. Therefore we too, like the disciples, repeat to him: Lord, increase our faith! It’s a beautiful prayer, let’s say it together.”
