The following quotes are taken from Pope Francis’s visit to Bulgaria last Sunday.
God of surprises
In Knyaz Alexandar I Square, Sofia, he said: “God calls and God surprises, because God loves. Love is His language. That is why He asks Peter, and us, to learn that language. He asks Peter: “Do you love me?” And Peter says yes; after spending so much time with Jesus, he now understands that to love means to stop putting himself at the centre. He now makes Jesus, not himself, the starting point: “You know everything” (Jn 21:18), he says.
“The Lord loves us: this is the source of our strength and we are asked to reaffirm it each day. Being a Christian is a summons to realise that God’s love is greater than all our shortcomings and sins. One of our great disappointments and difficulties today comes not from knowing that God is love, but that our way of proclaiming and bearing witness to Him is such that, for many people, this is not His name. God is love, a love that bestows itself, that calls and surprises.”
Christ is risen
In St Alexander Nevsky Square, Sofia, he said: “These words express great joy for the triumph of Jesus Christ over evil, over death. They are an affirmation and a testimony of the very heart of our faith: Christ is alive! He is our hope, and in a wonderful way he brings youth to our world. Everything he touches becomes young, new, full of life.
“The very first words, then, that I would like to say to each of you are these: Christ is alive, and he wants you to be alive. He is in you, he is with you and he never abandons you. He walks with you. However far you may wander, he is always there, the Risen One.”
Witnesses of Easter
At the Synod Palace, Sofia, he said: “On this journey, we are sustained by great numbers of our brothers and sisters, to whom I would especially like to render homage: the witnesses of Easter.
“How many Christians in this country endured suffering for the name of Jesus, particularly during the persecution of the last century! The ecumenism of blood! They spread a pleasing perfume over this ‘Land of Roses’. They passed through the thicket of trials in order to spread the fragrance of the Gospel. They blossomed in fertile and well-cultivated ground, as part of a people rich in faith and genuine humanity that gave them strong, deep roots.”
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)