Over the Holy Week period Pope Francis delivered several homilies with myriad points for pondering and reflections. Some of them follow.

Christ is alive

“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 every young Christian 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. However, far you may wander, he is always there, the Risen One. He calls you and he waits for you to return to him and start over again. When you feel you are growing old out of sorrow, resentment or fear, doubt or failure, he will always be there to restore your strength and your hope.”

Angelus address, Easter, April 21

He is homeless

“Today we want to contemplate the Crucified One specifically in his capacity as the prototype and representative of all the rejected, the disinherited, and the ‘discarded’ of the earth, those from whom we turn aside our faces so as not to see them.

“Jesus did not begin to be that man just at his passion. Throughout his life he was part of this group. He is born in a stable ‘because there was no place for them in the inn’ (Lk 2:7). In presenting him in the temple, his parents offer ‘two turtledoves or two young pigeons’, the offering proscribed by the law for the poor who could not offer a lamb (see Lev 12:8). That was a genuine proof of poverty in Israel of that time. During his public life, he has nowhere to lay his head (see Mt 8:20): he is homeless.”

Good Friday, April 19

We priests are...

“We priests are the poor man and we would like to have the heart of the poor widow whenever we give alms, touching the hand of the beggar and looking him or her in the eye. We priests are Bartimaeus, and each morning we get up and pray: ‘Lord, that I may see’. We priests are, in some point of our sinfulness, the man beaten by the robbers. And we want first to be in the compassionate hands of the good Samaritan, in order then to be able to show compassion to others with our own hands.

Homily at Chrism Mass, April 18

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)