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March 10, 2025Dear faithful, with this Eucharistic celebration my third pastoral visit to your parish ends. I give thanks to the Lord for these intense days among you. I have had the opportunity to experience beautiful and interesting encounters. I am particularly happy to have been able to celebrate the sacrament of confirmation for 35 children. May the Holy Spirit guide them in their Christian witness and in the choices they will have to make for their future. May they soon discover their vocation and mission.
I also had the great joy of having a meeting with young people. We had an hour and a half of questions and answers on the meaning of life, on faith in God Trinity of Love, how to know God and always be united with him and be docile to the action of the Holy Spirit. Our young people love Jesus Christ and love peace.
I also express my joy for having been able to celebrate mass with the children. Their joy is contagious. They are the Lord's favorites. I would like to thank in a special way the catechists whom I had the opportunity to meet and speak about how to communicate Christian hope to the new generations in a time full of radical changes.
I also had the joy of meeting the representatives of the various linguistic communities, the different ministries and the different movements and associations (the charisms), together with the members of the parish pastoral council. I thank all those who generously commit themselves to the various ministries and who spiritually animate the parish with their spiritual gifts.
Since we come from so many different nations, it is important to have linguistic communities in the parish that express the closeness of the Church to each person, they are at the same time responsible to introduce the faithful to the entire parish community. We are all members of a single body: we have the same faith, the same baptism, one is the spirit and one is the Heavenly Father. We are called to be united in the diversity of our gifts. The linguistic communities must also be committed to reach out to those faithful who have distenced themselves from the Church and inviting them to participate in our common journey. May the Jubilee of the Lord 2025 be an occasion to invite all the faithful to walk together.
I make a concrete proposal for you for this Holy Year. I am sure all of you know some faithful who do not come to Church, do not judge them but visit them with kindness and invite them to come to Church or at least to some particular occasion during this Lenten season or the Jubilee because we wish to walk together with them too. Let us communicate to everyone the hope that we have found in Christ.
Only God can be our true hope: but not just any god, but the God with a human face, the God who came to dwell among us. Our hope is Christ: he is the God with a human face, he is God made man for our salvation. The Gospel we have heard shows us a fundamental aspect of the life of Christ as our hope. Jesus is tempted by the devil in the desert for forty days. He is tempted but overcomes them.
Jesus is fasting and feels hungry. The devil tempts him by telling him to show that he is the Son of God by turning stones into bread: Jesus' response is disarming, “man does not live by bread alone”. In this way Jesus teaches us to move from our basic needs to the desire to listen to the word of God: every human being has a desire for God, is a seeker of God. Then the devil comes to tempt Jesus with power: the Devil promises to give him all power in exchange for his adoration. Jesus invites us not to fall into the trap of power and invites us to worship the Lord God alone, the only God.
Finally, the devil invites Jesus again to manifest his power. And he does so by using the words of the sacred scripture. But Jesus knows the deception. We must not tempt the Lord but worship and serve him for the good life of all.
Dear faithful, Jesus is our hope because he faced the hardest temptations. If we remain united with him, we too will know how to overcome temptations. Jesus is our hope: anchored in him we can overcome all difficulties and temptations. United with him and united among ourselves, we can win.
In the second reading, St. Paul invites us to believe with our hearts and to profess our faith with our lips in the God who became incarnate and who saved us. This year, we have a great opportunity to deepen our faith. In fact, we celebrate the anniversary of the Creed of the Council of Nicaea that we recite in Mass on Sundays and feast days. This creed is the faith that unites us all.
This is so important for us because we are a Church of migrants and we all come from many different nations, we have different languages and different rites, and yet we profess the same Christian faith, the faith of the Apostles.
Dearest, at the end of my pastoral visit I express my gratitude for your Christian witness; always be united, walk together as pilgrims of hope. I thank all the faithful for your voluntary service and for your decisive contribution to the parish. I thank Father Stalin the parish priest and Father Ernesto for their precious and faithful pastoral work. Always love and follow your priests, support them with your commitment and with your prayer.
May Mary, Mother of Hope, protect us on the Lenten journey and make us arrive at Easter purified and joyful.
