Francisco: God loves us in our weaknesses, let’s open the door to him

Adriana Masotti – Vatican City

Jesus, the one we contemplated as a child at Christmas, existed before the beginning of things, before the universe, before all time and space. This is what this Sunday’s Gospel passage tells us and that Pope Francis places at the center of his catechesis in the Angelus, delivered once again by the Library of the Apostolic Palace. (Listen to the report with the voice of the Pope)

God has always wanted to communicate with us

The apostle John begins his Gospel with these words: “In the beginning was the Word.” The Word, that is, the Word. And the Pope says:

Words are used to communicate: you don’t speak alone, you speak to someone. We always talk to someone. When in the street we see people talking to themselves, we say. “Something’s wrong with this person.” No: we always talk to someone. Now, the fact that Jesus is the Word from the beginning means that from the beginning God wants to communicate with us, he wants to speak to us. The only begotten Son of the Father wants to tell us the beauty of being children of God; it is ‘the true light’ and wants to lead us away from the darkness of evil; it is ‘life’, which knows our lives and wants to tell us that it has always loved them. He loves us all. This is today’s wonderful message: Jesus is the eternal Word of God, who has always thought of us and wants to communicate with us.

In Christ, God became fragile

But God went further, to speak to us, in fact, the Word became flesh and came ‘to dwell among us’. And Francis wonders why the evangelist uses the same word “flesh” and not the more elegant expression such as “he became a man.” And he observes: because that is how he wants to indicate “our human condition in all its weakness, in all its fragility”.

It tells us that God became fragile to touch our weaknesses closely. Therefore, since the Lord became flesh, nothing in our life is alien to him. There is nothing that He despises, we can share everything with Him. Everything. Dear brother, dear sister, God became flesh to tell us, to tell you that he loves you right there, that he loves us right there, in our weaknesses, in your weaknesses; right there, where we are most ashamed, where we are most ashamed of you.

And the Pope adds off his sleeve:

This is bold: God’s decision is bold, He became flesh where we are often ashamed. Enter into our shame of becoming our brother, of sharing the path of life.

We open our hearts and our homes to the Lord

God became flesh, that is, one of us, continues Pope Francis, not like someone who wears a dress, “who puts on and takes off.” Christ is in heaven “with his body of human flesh.” He has always been attached to our humanity, “we could say that he ‘married’ her.” “I like to think that when the Lord prays to the Father for us – the Pope continues – he not only speaks: he shows him the wounds of the flesh, he shows him the wounds he suffered for us”. Jesus bore the signs of our suffering. God in Jesus did not come to visit us, Francis emphasizes, he came to stay with us.

What do you want from us then? You want a lot of privacy. He wants us to share with him joys and sorrows, wishes and fears, hopes and sorrows, people and situations. Let’s do it, with confidence, open our hearts, we tell you everything. Let us stop in silence in front of the nativity scene to savor the tenderness of God who became close, became flesh. And without fear let us invite him to ourselves, to our home, to our family, and also, everyone knows well, let us invite him in our weaknesses. Let us invite him to see our wounds. It will come and life will change.