This Friday, February 2, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord and World Day of Consecrated Life, Pope Francis presides at Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
Below is the complete homily of the Holy Father:
While the people waited for the salvation of the Lord, the prophets announced his coming, as the prophet Malachi stated: “the Lord whom you seek will enter his Temple; and the Angel of the covenant that you desire is coming, says the Lord of hosts” (3:1).
Simeon and Ana are the image and figure of this wait. They see the Lord enter his temple and, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, they recognize him in the Child that Mary carries in her arms. They had been waiting for him all their lives: Simeon, “who was just and pious, and hoped for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25); Anna, who “did not depart from the Temple” (Luke 2:37).
It does us good to look at these two elderly people who are patient in waiting, vigilant in spirit and persevering in prayer. Their hearts remain vigilant, like a torch always lit. They are advanced in age, but they have youth at heart; They do not allow themselves to be consumed by the days that pass because their eyes remain fixed on God, in waiting (cf. Ps 145:15). The face towards God waiting, always waiting.
Along the path of life they experienced difficulties and disappointments, but they did not surrender to defeatism: they did not “retire” hope. And so, contemplating the Child, they recognized that the time had been fulfilled, the prophecy had come true, the One whom they sought and for whom they longed, the Messiah of the nations, had arrived.
Having kept awake the expectation of the Lord, they became capable of welcoming him in the newness of his coming. Brothers and sisters, waiting for God is also important for us, for our journey of faith.
Every day the Lord visits us, speaks to us, reveals himself in unexpected ways and, at the end of life and time, he will come. That is why He Himself exhorts us to remain awake, to be vigilant, to persevere in waiting. The worst thing that can happen to us, in fact, is to fall into the “sleep of the spirit”: let the heart go to sleep, anesthetize the soul, store hope in the dark corners of disappointment and resignation.
I think of you, consecrated sisters and brothers, and of the gift you represent; I think about each of us, Christians today: are we still capable of living the wait? Aren’t we sometimes too caught up in ourselves, in things and in the intense rhythms of each day, to the point of forgetting God who always comes?
Are we not too enthralled by our good works, even running the risk of turning religious and Christian life into “many things to do” and neglecting the daily search for the Lord? Are we not sometimes in danger of programming our personal and community life based on the calculation of the possibilities of success, instead of cultivating with joy and humility the small seed that is entrusted to us, with the patience of someone who sows without expecting anything, and Who knows how to wait for God’s times and surprises?
Sometimes—we must admit—we have lost this ability to wait. This is due to various obstacles, and among them I would like to highlight two. The first is the neglect of the inner life. This is what happens when fatigue prevails over amazement, when habit replaces enthusiasm, when we lose perseverance on the spiritual path, when negative experiences, conflicts or fruits, which seem to be delayed, turn us into bitter and resentful people. .
It is not good to chew bitterness, because in a religious family—as in any community and family—bitter people with a “gloomy face” make the atmosphere heavy. Be there person who seems to have vinegar in his heart.
It is then necessary to recover the lost grace, that is, to return, through an intense interior life, to the spirit of joyful humility and silent gratitude.
And this is nourished with adoration, with the commitment of the knees and the heart, with concrete prayer that fights and intercedes, which is capable of enlivening the desire for God, the love of yesteryear, the amazement of the first day, the taste of waiting.
The second obstacle is adaptation to the style of the world, which ends up taking the place of the Gospel. And ours is a world that often runs at great speed, that exalts the “everything and now,” that is consumed by activism and seeking to exorcise the fears and anxieties of life in the pagan temples of consumerism or in the search for fun at all costs.
In such a context of these pagan times, in which silence is banished and lost, waiting is not easy, because it requires an attitude of healthy passivity, the courage to slow down, to not let ourselves be overwhelmed by activities, to let space within us for the action of God, as Christian mysticism teaches.
Let us take care, then, that the spirit of the world does not enter into our religious communities, into the life of the Church and into the path of each one of us, otherwise we will not bear fruit.
The Christian life and the apostolic mission need waiting, matured in prayer and daily fidelity, to free us from the myth of efficiency, the obsession with productivity and, above all, the pretension of locking God in our categories, because He always comes unpredictably, in times that are not ours and in ways that are not what we expect.
As the French mystic and philosopher Simone Weil states, we are the wife who waits at night for the arrival of her husband, and «the role of the future wife is to wait […]. Desiring God and renouncing everything else is the only thing that saves her »(S. WEIL, Waiting for God, Madrid 1996, 125-126).
Sisters and brothers, let us cultivate in prayer the expectation of the Lord and learn the good “passivity of the Spirit”: thus we will be able to open ourselves to the newness of God. Like Simeon, let us also carry the Child in our arms, the God of novelty and surprises. When we welcome the Lord, the past opens to the future, the old in us opens to the new that He gives birth to.
This is not easy—we know—because, in religious life as in the life of every Christian, it is difficult to oppose the “force of the old”: “because it is not easy for the old in us to welcome the new.” […]. Welcome the new into the old. The newness of God presents itself as a child and we—with all our habits, fears, fears, envies (think of envies), concerns—we find ourselves before this child. Will we embrace him, will we welcome him, will we make space for him? Will this newness really enter our lives, or will we rather try to marry the old and the new, trying to make the presence of God’s newness bother us as little as possible? (CM MARTINI, Meditations on prayer, Madrid 2011, 32).
Brothers and sisters, these questions are for us, for our communities, for the Church. Let us allow ourselves to be challenged, let us allow ourselves to be moved by the Spirit, like Simeon and Anna. If, like them, we know how to live waiting in the care of our interior life and in coherence with the style of the Gospel, then we will embrace Jesus, the light and hope of life.