Pope Francis has prayed for those who died in the Germanwings tragedy at the conclusion of Palm Sunday Mass.
In the prayer, which the Pope said outside St Peter’s Basilica, he made particular reference to the 16 German students who died when Flight 4U9525 crashed in the French Alps last week.
“I entrust to The Virgin Mary’s intercession the victims of Tuesday’s tragic plane crash,” he said in his Angelus address. “Those who died included a group of German students.”
An estimated 70,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Mass at the start of Holy Week.
After the proclamation of the Passion according to St Mark, Pope Francis’s homily reflected on the plight of Christians in the Middle East currently being persecuted by ISIS terrorists.
“We think too of our brothers and sisters who are persecuted because they are Christians, the martyrs of our own time,” he said.
“They refuse to deny Jesus and they endure insult and injury with dignity. They follow Him on His way.”
The Holy Father ended the homily by calling on the faithful to undertake the Way of the Cross.
“Let us set about with determination along this same path with immense love for Him, our Lord and Saviour. Love will guide us and give us strength. For where He is, we too shall be. (cf. Jn 12:26),” he said.
The Pope joined the pilgrims in St Peter’s Square in carrying palm fronds and branches. When standing on the basilica’s steps, he leaned on a simple wooden staff.
Pope Francis tweeted message for Holy Week from his Twitter account on Monday morning, describing it as “a privileged time”.
Holy Week is a privileged time when we are called to draw near to Jesus: friendship with him is shown in times of difficulty.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 30, 2015
On Holy Thursday, the Pontiff will preside over two services, including one at a prison in Rome prison during which he will wash and kiss the feet of male and female inmates. On Good Friday evening, Francis will lead a Way of the Cross service at Rome’s Colosseum. He will celebrate mid-morning Mass in St Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday and this will be followed by the giving of a blessing from the basilica’s central balcony.
Full text of Pope Francis’s homily:
At the heart of this celebration, which seems so festive, are the words we heard in the hymn of the Letter to the Philippians: “He humbled himself” (2:8). Jesus’ humiliation.
These words show us God’s way and the way of Christians: it is humility. A way which constantly amazes and disturbs us: we will never get used to a humble God!
Humility is above all God’s way: God humbles himself to walk with his people, to put up with their infidelity. This is clear when we read the Book of Exodus. How humiliating for the Lord to hear all that grumbling, all those complaints against Moses, but ultimately against him, their Father, who brought them out of slavery and was leading them on the journey through the desert to the land of freedom.
This week, Holy Week, which leads us to Easter, we will take this path of Jesus’ own humiliation. Only in this way will this week be “holy” for us too!
We will feel the contempt of the leaders of his people and their attempts to trip him up. We will be there at the betrayal of Judas, one of the Twelve, who will sell him for thirty pieces of silver. We will see the Lord arrested and carried off like a criminal; abandoned by his disciples, dragged before the Sanhedrin, condemned to death, beaten and insulted. We will hear Peter, the “rock” among the disciples, deny him three times. We will hear the shouts of the crowd, egged on by their leaders, who demand that Barabas be freed and Jesus crucified. We will see him mocked by the soldiers, robed in purple and crowned with thorns. And then, as he makes his sorrowful way beneath the cross, we will hear the jeering of the people and their leaders, who scoff at his being King and Son of God.
This is God’s way, the way of humility. It is the way of Jesus; there is no other. And there can be no humility without humiliation.
Following this path to the full, the Son of God took on the “form of a slave” (cf. Phil 2:7). In the end, humility means service. It means making room for God by stripping oneself, “emptying oneself”, as Scripture says (v. 7). This is the greatest humiliation of all.
There is another way, however, opposed to the way of Christ. It is worldliness, the way of the world. The world proposes the way of vanity, pride, success… the other way. The Evil One proposed this way to Jesus too, during his forty days in the desert. But Jesus immediately rejected it. With him, we too can overcome this temptation, not only at significant moments, but in daily life as well.
In this, we are helped and comforted by the example of so many men and women who, in silence and hiddenness, sacrifice themselves daily to serve others: a sick relative, an elderly person living alone, a disabled person…
We think too of the humiliation endured by all those who, for their lives of fidelity to the Gospel, encounter discrimination and pay a personal price. We think too of our brothers and sisters who are persecuted because they are Christians, the martyrs of our own time. They refuse to deny Jesus and they endure insult and injury with dignity. They follow him on his way. We can speak of a “cloud of witnesses” (cf. Heb 12:1).
Let us set about with determination along this same path, with immense love for him, our Lord and Saviour. Love will guide us and give us strength. For where he is, we too shall be (cf. Jn 12:26). Amen.
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