2024-02-11 10:21:27
During the canonization mass of Mama Antula, the Pope, commenting on the day’s readings, warned against three “leprosy of the soul”: fear, prejudice and false religiosity. It is by allowing ourselves to be touched by Christ that we are witnesses to the love that saves, as was the new Argentinian saint.
Olivier Bonnel – Vatican City
After the singing of Veni Creator, Cardinal Marcello Semerara, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, advanced towards Pope Francis to recite the traditional formula asking the Holy Father to inscribe Blessed María Antonia de San José de Paz y Figueroa on the register of saints. He was accompanied by Silvia Correale, postulator of the cause of canonization of the one called Mama Antula.
The Pope who paid tribute in his homily to the life of the first Argentine saint, explaining how much she had been “touched” by Jesus during Spiritual Exercises, in a context of material and moral poverty. It is on “touch” that the Bishop of Rome focused his reflection, commenting on the day’s readings taken from Leviticus (Lv 13, 1-2.45-46) and the Gospel of Mark (Mk 1, 40 -45) which both evoke lepers.
The three “lepers of the soul”
Leprosy is “a disease which leads to the progressive physical destruction of the person and to which, unfortunately, attitudes of marginalization are still often associated in certain places,” recalled the Pope. “Leprosy and marginalization: these are two evils from which Jesus wants to free the man he meets in the Gospel.” Left to his own devices, the leper was condemned to live in isolation. It was the fear of being contaminated by him and the prejudices, according to which God would have punished him for a fault, which pushed him to be excluded. Added to this was the fear of becoming impure if one were to touch it. An attitude that Francis has described as “false religiosity”.
“Fear, prejudice and false religiosity are the three causes of great injustice, three “leprosy of the soul” which make the weak suffer and which reject them like waste,” explained the Sovereign Pontiff, emphasizing that it is not “a bygone past”. “How many suffering people do we encounter on the sidewalks of our cities! And how many fears, prejudices and inconsistencies, even among those who believe and call themselves Christians, contribute to hurting them more!” François asked.
The portrait of Mama Antula, canonized this Sunday
Touch and Healing
The Pope invited us to look at the attitude of Jesus who touches and heals. By touching the leper, Christ reverses the roles: the sick, once cured, can go see the priests and be readmitted into the community; Jesus, on the other hand, will no longer be able to enter any inhabited place. The Lord could have “healed from a distance”, but “he is not like that, his path is that of love which becomes close to those who suffer, which enters into contact, which touches their wounds” Francis further explained .
“We, who love and follow Jesus, know how to appropriate his “touch”?” he then asked the faithful. And to warn against the temptations to distance ourselves from others, to reduce ourselves “to the walls of our “well-being””. Francis thus denounced the “leprosy of the soul” which is a great contemporary temptation: “an illness which makes us insensitive to love, to compassion, which destroys us by the “gangrene” of selfishness, of ideas preconceived notions, indifference and intolerance.
Two days before the canonization of the first Argentine saint in History in Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Pope received 300 pilgrims from his native country, Friday February 9, in …
After touching, Jesus heals. “It is by letting ourselves be touched by Jesus that we heal inside, in our heart,” the Pope again recalled, inviting us to let ourselves be touched by Him through his Word and by the sacraments. This must be done through prayer, asking this question: “do I let Jesus touch my “leprosy” so that he can heal me?”
Mama Antula, “pioneer of the Spirit
The regeneration of the body and the soul are miracles that do not require “grandiose and spectacular forms to be accomplished,” Francis further underlined. On the contrary, it is a miracle “which occurs above all in the hidden charity of everyday life: that which is experienced in the family, at work, in the parish and at school, in the street, in the offices and stores; the one who does not seek publicity and who does not need applause, because love is enough.
Mama Antula “traveled thousands of kilometers on foot, through deserts and dangerous roads, to bring God. Today, she is for us a model of apostolic fervor and audacity,” recalled the Pope, hailing her as “a pioneer of the Spirit.” “During the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Spirit lit in her a missionary flame based on trust in Providence and perseverance. She invokes the intercession of Saint Joseph and, so as not to tire him too much, that of Saint Gaétan Thiene. He therefore introduced devotion to the latter and his first image arrived in Buenos Aires in the 18th century. Thanks to Mama Antula, this saint, intercessor of Divine Providence, entered homes, neighborhoods, transport, stores, factories and hearts, to offer a dignified life through work, justice and daily bread on the table of the poor.
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