At Wednesday’s hearing, Pope Francis says that we have access to the Trinity through prayer, thanks to Jesus.
By Christopher Wells
“It was Jesus who opened Heaven for us and projected us into a relationship with God,” said Pope Francis at Wednesday’s General Audience. “Jesus revealed to us the identity, this identity of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
The Holy Father continued his continuous catechesis on prayer, focusing this week, and the next, on the relationship between prayer and the Trinity. It is thanks to Jesus Christ, said the Pope, “that prayer opens us to the immense sea of God as love”.
Our poverty before God
The Pope noted that not all prayers are the same and suggests that “perhaps God is sometimes not satisfied with our prayers and we are not even aware of it”. He quotes the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, in the Canticle of the Sun: “No one is worthy to mention your name”; as well as the words of the centurion of the Gospel: “Lord, I am not worthy for you to enter under my roof”, which we repeat at each Mass.
“There are no obvious reasons” why “humanity is so loved by God”, or why He hears our prayers, said the Pope. He noted that, throughout history, people have seen gods or deities as distant and indifferent, unconcerned with human affairs. “Actually,” he said, “We are the ones who try to convince the divinity and be pleasing to your eyes.”
“A God who loves humanity”
It is only through Jesus that we have the “courage” to believe in a God who loves humanity, said the Pope. We see the love of God in the parables of the merciful father and the shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep.
But Pope Francis said: “We would not have been able to conceive or even understand such stories had we not known Jesus”.
It is through His life and his willingness to die for us that Jesus shows us “to what extent God is our Father … the fatherhood that is closeness, compassion and tenderness”.
We cannot understand the mutual love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, said Pope Francis, and without Jesus, we would not have been able to begin to understand “that this divine love would expand, landing on our human coast. “
Citing the Catechism, Pope Francis explained: “Jesus’ sacred humanity is, therefore, the way in which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father”. This, he said in conclusion, “is the grace of our faith. In fact, we could not expect a higher vocation: the humanity of Jesus is placed at the disposal of the very life of the Trinity ”.