Below is the complete homily of Pope Francis at the Holy Mass from the Estepa Arena stadium in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia:
With the words of the Psalm we have prayed: “O God, […] my soul thirsts for you, for you my flesh sighs like a thirsty, parched and waterless land” (Ps 63,2 ). This wonderful invocation accompanies the journey of our life, in the midst of the deserts that we are called to cross. And it is precisely in that arid land where the good news reaches us. On our path we are not alone; our dryness does not have the power to make our life sterile forever; The cry of our thirst does not remain unanswered.
God the Father has sent his Son to give us the living water of the Holy Spirit to quench the thirst of our soul (cf. Jn 4:10). And Jesus—we heard it a moment ago in the Gospel—shows us the way to quench our thirst: it is the path of love, which He has traveled to the end, to the cross, from which he calls us to follow him “losing the life to find it” again (cf. Mt 16:24-25).
Let us pause together on these two aspects: the thirst that inhabits us and the love that quenches the thirst. Above all, we are called to recognize the thirst that inhabits us. The psalmist cries out to God for his own aridity because his life is like a desert. His words have a particular resonance in a land like Mongolia; an immense territory, rich in history and culture, but also marked by the aridity of the steppe and the desert.
Many of you are used to the beauty and fatigue of having to walk, an action that evokes an essential aspect of biblical spirituality, represented by the figure of Abraham and, more generally, something distinctive of the people of Israel and of each disciple. of the Lord. We are all, in fact, “nomads of God”, pilgrims in search of happiness, walkers thirsty for love. The desert evoked by the psalmist refers, then, to our life; We are that arid land that thirsts for clear water, a water that deeply quenches thirst. It is our heart that wants to discover the secret of true joy, the one that, even in the midst of existential dryness, can accompany us and sustain us.
Yes, we carry an inextinguishable thirst for happiness, we seek meaning and meaning for our lives, a motivation for the activities we carry out every day; and above all we are thirsty for love because only love truly quenches our thirst, makes us feel good, love makes us feel good, opens us to trust, making us savor the beauty of life.
Dear brothers and sisters, the Christian faith responds to this thirst; takes her seriously; He does not discard it, he does not try to appease it with palliatives or substitutes. Because in this thirst is our great mystery; This thirst opens us to the living God, to the loving God who comes to meet us to make us his children and brothers and sisters among us.
And thus we arrive at the second aspect: the love that quenches thirst. First, it was our thirst, essential and deep, and now the love that quenches it. This is the content of the Christian faith: God, who is love, in his Son Jesus, has become close to you, he wants to share your life, your work, your dreams, your thirst for happiness.
It is true, that sometimes we feel like a thirsty, parched land without water, but it is also true that God takes care of us and offers us clear water that quenches thirst, the living water of the Spirit that, welling up in us, it renews us and frees us from the danger of dryness. This water is given to us by Jesus. As Saint Augustine affirms, “if we recognize ourselves as thirsty, we will also recognize ourselves as those who drink ” ( Commentaries on the Psalms, 62,3).
Indeed, if we experience the desert so many times in our lives, loneliness, fatigue, and sterility, we must not forget this: “But so that we do not faint in this desert,” adds Saint Augustine, “God sent us the dew of his Word […], so that we feel thirsty in such a way, that we can drink […]. God has had compassion on us, and has opened a way for us in the desert: our Lord Jesus Christ himself; This is the path in the desert of life. He has given us comfort in the desert, sending us preachers of his Word; He gave us water to drink in the desert, filling his preachers with the Holy Spirit so that the fountain of water that flows to eternal life might arise in them” ( ibid. , 3.8).
These words, dear brothers, evoke our history. In the desert of life, in the work of being a small community, the Lord does not make us lack the water of his Word, especially through the preachers and missionaries who, anointed by the Holy Spirit, sow beauty. of the. And the Word always, always leads us to the essentials of faith: letting ourselves be loved by God to make our life an offering of love. Because only love truly quenches our thirst. Let’s not forget, only love is truly satisfying.
This is what Jesus says, with a strong tone, to the apostle Peter in today’s Gospel. He does not accept the fact that Jesus has to suffer, be accused by the leaders of the people, go through the passion and then die on the cross. Peter reacts, protests, he would like to convince Jesus that he is wrong, because according to him —and we also often think so— the Messiah cannot end up defeated, and in no way can he die crucified, like a criminal abandoned by God. But the Lord rebukes Peter, because his way of thinking is “that of men” and not that of God (cf. Mt 16:21-23).
If we think that success, power, and material things are enough to quench the thirst for the aridity of our lives, this is a worldly mentality, that does not lead to anything good, but also leaves us drier than before. Jesus, however, shows us the way: “Whoever wants to come after me must renounce himself, take up his cross and follow me. Because whoever wants to save his life, he will lose it; but whoever loses his life because of me, he will find it ”( Mt 16,24-25).
Brothers, sisters, this is the best path of all: embracing the cross of Christ. At the heart of Christianity is this disconcerting and extraordinary news: when you lose your life, when you offer it generously, when you risk it by committing it to love, when you make it a free gift to others, then it returns to you abundantly, pours out within From you a joy that never passes, a peace in your heart, an inner strength that sustains you. We need inner peace.
This is the truth that Jesus invites us to discover, that Jesus wants to reveal to everyone, to this land of Mongolia: to be happy it is not necessary to be big, rich or powerful. Only love quenches the thirst of our hearts, only love heals our wounds, only love gives us true joy. And this is the path that Jesus has taught us and opened for us.
Let us also, then, listen to the word that the Lord says to Peter: “Go after me” ( Mt 16:23), that is: be my disciple, follow the same path that I do and no longer think like the world. In this way, with the grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we will be able to walk the path of love. Even when loving involves denying oneself, fighting against personal and worldly selfishness, daring to live fraternally.
Because if it is true that all this costs effort and sacrifice, and sometimes involves having to climb the cross, it is no less true that when we lose our lives for the Gospel, the Lord gives it to us in abundance, full of love and joy, to the eternity.