Pope Francis Santa Marta Mass Death 29.11.19

In this last week of the liturgical year the Church invites us to reflect on the end: the end of the world and the end of each of us. This theme is echoed in the Gospel reading (Luke 21: 29-33) in which Luke repeats Jesus’s words: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."

This is how it is "everything will end" but "He will remain". I invite everyone to reflect on the moment of the end, that is, death. None of us knows exactly when it will happen; indeed, we often tend to put off that thought believing ourselves eternal, but it is not so.

We all have this weakness, this vulnerability. Yesterday I was thinking about this with a article just published in the Jesuit publication Civiltà Cattolica that tells us that what we all have in common is that vulnerability. We are all vulnerable, and at some point this vulnerability leads us to death. That's why we go to the doctor or to psychologists in search of healing for our bodies or for our minds.

Vulnerability therefore unites us and no illusion protects us. In my country, there was a fashion for people paying for their own funerals in advance with the illusion of saving money for the family. But when it came to light that some funeral companies were scamming people, that trend ended. How many times are we cheated by an illusion? Like the illusion of being eternal. The certainty of death is written in the Bible and in the Gospel, but the Lord always presents it to us as an encounter with Him and accompanies it with the word hope.

The Lord tells us to be prepared for the encounter, death is an encounter: it is He who comes to visit us, it is He who comes to take us by the hand and take us with Him. I wouldn't want this simple sermon to be a funeral notice! It is simply Gospel, it is simply life, it is simply saying to one another: "we are all vulnerable and we all have a door on which one day the Lord will knock."

Therefore, it is necessary to prepare well for that moment when the bell will ring, the moment when the Lord will knock on our door: let us pray for each other.

My invitation, is to be ready to open the door with trust and confidence to the Lord who comes. All of the things that we have collected, that we have saved, even good, we will not bring anything.. But, yes, we will bring the Lord's embrace. Think of one's own death: I will die, when? It is not marked on the calendar but he Lord knows it. And pray to the Lord: " Lord, prepare my heart to die well, to die in peace, to die with hope." This is the word that must always accompany our lives, the hope of living with the Lord here and then living with the Lord somewhere else. Let us pray for one another for this.