The Catholic Church and all of humanity want guidance and support in a world filled with toil, doubts and contradictions, said Cardinal Baldassare Reina, papal vicar of Rome.
With the death of Pope Francis, leader of the universal Church, men and women today are “orphans of a word that guides amid siren songs that flatter the instincts of self-redemption, that breaks loneliness, gathers the marginalized, that does not give in to bullying, and has the courage not to bend the Gospel to the tragic compromises of fear, to complicity with worldly mindsets, to alliances that are blind and deaf to the signs of the Holy Spirit,” he said in his homily.
Cardinal Reina celebrated Mass April 28 for the third day of the “novendiali” – nine days of mourning for the late pope marked by Masses. Thousands of people had gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica, including more than 180 cardinals, who are in Rome for a series of private meetings before the conclave begins May 7 to elect a new pope.
Presiding over the Mass, Cardinal Reina said that he was there to “express the prayer and sorrow” of the Diocese of Rome, which has the historic responsibility of being home to the leader of the universal Church.
Right now, the diocese and the world’s Catholics are without their shepherd, he said, and humanity itself seems like “sheep without a shepherd” given how the world is burning “and few have the courage to proclaim the Gospel by translating it into a vision of a possible and concrete future.”
Jesus showed the way with his life and teachings, which is then shared by his disciples, the cardinal said. The way requires deep conversion combined with actions capable of giving life to words with “a caress, an outstretched hand, unarmed speech, without judgment, liberating, not afraid of contact with what is impure.”
This service is “necessary to awaken faith, to arouse hope that the evil present in the world will not have the last word, that life is stronger than death.” he said.
Jesus understands “the burden on each of us in continuing his mission, especially as we find ourselves looking” for the next pope, he said.
“The scope is immense, and temptations creep in, veiling the only thing that matters: to desire, to seek, to work in expectation of ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’” Cardinal Reina said.
As the cardinals meet to discuss and choose Pope Francis’s successor, it cannot be a time of “political balancing acts, tactics, caution, a time that panders to the instinct to go backward, or worse, to rivalries and alliances of power,” he said. “A radical disposition is needed to enter God’s dream entrusted to our poor hands.”
The people of God and its pastors are proclaiming a “newness” through Jesus Christ, which means there cannot be “that mental and spiritual laziness that binds us to the forms of God’s experience and Church practices from the past,” he said.
“I am thinking of the multiple processes of reform in the life of the Church initiated by Pope Francis,” which also go beyond the Catholic world, Cardinal Reina said.
The world saw Pope Francis as “a universal shepherd,” he said, and “the barque of Peter” needs to sail on wide open seas that go beyond all boundaries and create “surprises.”
The duty of the College of Cardinals “should be to discern and order what has begun, in light of what our mission requires of us, in the direction of a new heaven and a new earth,” he said.
They must make the Church beautiful for Christ not for “worldly conveniences, guided by ideological pretensions that tear apart the unity of Christ’s garments,” he said.
Their duty, he said, is to seek a shepherd who: “can handle the fear of loss in the face of the demands of the Gospel”; who “has the gaze of Jesus” and can show God’s humanity “in a world that has inhuman traits”; and who “confirms that we must walk together” as people of God made to proclaim the Gospel.
Jesus feels compassion for his people and does not want them to be “a flock without a shepherd,” he said, and this now is their prayer.
It is a prayer of “the whole Church and of all women and men, who ask to be guided and sustained in the toil of life, amid doubts and contradictions, orphans of a word that guides,” he said.
In his homily, Cardinal Reina emphasized that being a servant of God requires giving one’s life. “The good shepherd sows with his own death, forgiving his enemies, preferring their salvation, the salvation of all, to his own.”
Like the grain of wheat that falls into the ground, they, too, must sow with their lives, he said.
“It is a time of famine,” he said. And “the farmer weeps because he knows that this last act is asking him to put his life at risk.”
“But God does not abandon his people, he does not leave his shepherds alone,” he said. “Our faith holds the promise of a joyful harvest, but it will have to pass through the death of the seed that is our life.”
