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February 2, 2023Ruwi.
On his pastoral visit to Ruwi (Oman), Bishop Paolo addressed the faithful during the Sunday homily. Below is the full text of the homily.
I would like to express my joy to be with you on these days for the pastoral visit. A bishop has to be with the people of God present in the various parishes of our Apostolic Vicariate.
For you, I am a bishop, and with you, I am a brother. Thank you for your welcome. Above all, I would like to get to know you and understand how you live your faith as an ecclesial community and as a parish in Oman. I wish to know how I can help you discover Jesus more deeply and how our relationship with him can illuminate our lives. Our community is made up of very different people by nationalities, languages, and rites. Yet we are called to be one family. We are all baptized. We are all children of God.
One of the themes that are closest to my heart is about discovering the relationship between faith and life. How do the encounter with Christ in the Eucharist and the word of God, illuminate and give new strength to live daily life with courage and joy in our families, homes, workplaces, and schools? I wish to convey to you the closeness of our Church in the Apostolic Vicariate. Here in Ruwi, you are not alone. You are part of a larger Church; in the same way, our Vicariate is part of the Universal Church spread throughout the world.
The word of God that today's liturgy offers us is rich and touches a fundamental dimension of our faith. We are facing the sermon on the mount, the proclamation of the beatitudes, which Jesus addresses to the people and his disciples who share his mission.
This passage from the Gospel helps us to understand the essence of Christianity. First, at the center is the invitation to be happy! The Lord in this text invites us to be happy and speaks to us about joy. Therefore, to understand Christianity, we must have a great desire to be happy.
This is not an obvious desire, for many reasons. Sometimes we realize that we do things and make decisions that don't help us on our path to happiness. We must recognize that God desires our happiness more than we desire it. God created us to be happy and joyful. He didn't create us for sadness or pain.
Dear brothers and sisters, our desire is linked to our human nature. This means that it is God himself who has put this desire into our hearts. And we must be faithful to this divine desire in us.
But after rediscovering the desire for happiness, there is immediately another question that the Gospel asks us. What makes us truly happy? In what do we seek true happiness? And here we indeed find many different answers: we can pursue happiness in money, in power, in success, in superficial pleasures. The Bible calls all these things as idols. Because they are not able to give us true happiness, and in the end, they always disappoint us.
The Gospel passage we heard is genuinely revolutionary because it tells us that they are happy. Who? The poor in spirit; the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers: Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right.
Why are they happy now? Because God has promised to bless those who live this way: theirs is the kingdom of heaven, they shall have the earth for their heritage; they shall be comforted; they shall be satisfied, they shall have mercy, they shall see God. They shall be called sons of God. But if we think more deeply about these expressions, we realize that we see all these things accomplished in Jesus himself. Then we can say that Jesus is really happy because he is the poor in Spirit, the merciful, hungry and thirsty for justice, and no one like him is pure in heart.
Happy is Jesus, and happy are we if we welcome Jesus into our lives. Happy are those who meet Jesus and follow him. This happiness is not just about the future or the afterlife; it starts here on earth. We are made to love and to be loved, and when we meet Jesus, we meet the greatest love, that love that never fails.
Dear friends, let us never let ourselves be discouraged by hard work. We welcome the love of Christ in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist and in the sacrament of Forgiveness. We receive Jesus in the word of God that is proclaimed. We welcome God's love as a community of believers, as brothers and sisters.
Jesus chooses us to be witnesses of his love. As Saint Paul says, although we are limited people and sinners, God shows his power through our weakness. Do not worry about our limits. Be happy because you are chosen to witness divine love in the world.
Let us help each other to be, indeed, a united Church, a community gathered by the love of Christ. May Mary, Mother of God, and Mother of the Church help us walk serenely towards the kingdom of heaven.