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Homily of Pope Francis at Holy Thursday Chrism Mass
St. Peter’s Basilica – Maundy Thursday, 28 March 2024
Gospel Reading: Luke 4: 16-21
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
” The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him” (Lk 4:20).
This passage of the Gospel is always striking, which leads us to visualize the scene: to imagine that moment of silence in which all eyes were focused on Jesus, in a mixture of wonder and mistrust. However, we do know how it ended: after Jesus had unmasked the false expectations of his fellow villagers, they “were filled with indignation” (Lk 4:28), And they rose up and put him out of the city. Lk 4:29),
Their eyes had fixed Jesus, but their hearts were unwilling to change on his word.
So they lost the chance of a lifetime.
But on the evening of today, Holy Thursday, there is an alternative crossing of gazes.
The protagonist is the first Pastor of our Church, Peter.
At first, he too did not trust the “unmasking” word that the Lord had addressed to him: “Three times you will deny me” (Mk 14:30).
So he “lost sight of” Jesus and denied him at the crowing of the cock. But then, when “the Lord turned and looked” upon him, he “remembered the word which the Lord had spoken to him … He went out and wept bitterly” (Lk 22:61-62). His eyes were flooded with tears that flowed from a wounded heart and freed him from false beliefs and justifications. That bitter cry changed his life.
For years, Jesus’ words and gestures had not moved Peter from his expectations, similar to those of the people of Nazareth: he too was waiting for a political and powerful Messiah, strong and decisive, and faced with the scandal of a weak Jesus, arrested without resistance, he declared: “I do not know him!” (Lk 22:57). And it is true, he did not know him: he began to know him when, in the darkness of denial, he made room for the tears of shame, the tears of repentance. And he will really know him when, “sorrowful that for the third time he asks him: ‘Do you love me?'”, he will allow himself to be fully penetrated by Jesus’ gaze. Then from “I do not know him” he goes on to say: “Lord, you know everything” (Jn 21:17).
Dear brother priests, the healing of Peter’s heart, the healing of the Apostle, the healing of the Pastor take place when, wounded and repentant, we allow ourselves to be forgiven by Jesus: they pass through tears, bitter tears, pain that allows us to rediscover love.
F or this reason, I felt I would like to share with you some thoughts on an aspect of the spiritual life that is rather overlooked, but essential; I propose it again today with a word that is perhaps obsolete, but which I believe it is good for us to rediscover: compunction.
Compunction
The word evokes piercing/stinging: compunction is “a prick on the heart.”
It isa piercing that wounds it, causing the tears of repentance to flow.
An episode, which still concerns St. Peter, helps us.
Pierced by the gaze and words of the Risen Jesus, on the day of Pentecost, purified and inflamed by the Spirit, he proclaimed to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, Lord and Christ” (cf. Acts 2:36). The listeners felt both the evil they had done and the salvation that the Lord bestowed upon them, and “when they heard these things”, the text says, “they felt their hearts pierced” (Acts 2:37).
This is compunction: not a sense of guilt that throws you to the ground, not a scrupulousness that paralyzes, but it is a beneficial prick that burns inside and heals, because the heart, when it sees its own evil and recognizes itself as a sinner, opens up, welcomes the action of the Holy Spirit, living water that moves it by making tears flow down its face. Those who throw off the mask and allow themselves to be looked at by God in their hearts receive the gift of these tears, the holiest waters after those of Baptism [1]. Dear brother priests, I wish you this today.
However, we need to understand what it means to cry over ourselves.
It doesn’t mean feeling sorry for ourselves, as we are often tempted to do.
This happens, for example, when we are disappointed or worried about our unfulfilled expectations, about the lack of understanding on the part of others, perhaps of confreres and superiors.
Or when, out of a strange and insane pleasure of the soul, we love to stir in the wrongs received to self-pity ourselves, thinking that we have not received what we deserved and imagining that the future can only reserve us continuous negative surprises.
Saint Paul teaches us, This is sadness according to the world, as opposed to sadness according to God. (cf 2 Cor 7:10 – “Godly sorrow produces irrevocable repentance leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death”.
To weep over ourselves, on the other hand, is to seriously repent of having grieved God by sin;
it is to acknowledge that we are always in debt and never in credit;
it is to admit that we have lost the way of holiness, having not kept faith in the love of Him who gave his life for me.
It is to look within myself and lament my ingratitude and inconstancy;
it is to meditate with sadness on my duplicity and falsehoods;
It is to descend into the depths of my hypocrisy, clerical hypocrisy, dear brothers, that hypocrisy into which we slip so much, so much…
Beware of clerical hypocrisy.
And then, to raise my gaze to the Crucified One and let myself be moved by his love that always forgives and lifts up, that never lets the expectations of those who trust in him disappointed.
So the tears continue to flow and purify the heart.
In fact, compunction requires effort but restores peace; it does not cause anguish, but relieves the soul of burdens, because it acts in the wound of sin, disposing us to receive the Lord’s caress that transforms the heart when it is “contrite and broken” (Ps 51:19), softened by tears.
Compunction is therefore the antidote to sclerocardia, that hardness of heart so denounced by Jesus (cf. Mk 3:5; 10:5).
The heart, in fact, without repentance and tears, becomes rigid: at first it becomes habitual, then intolerant of problems and indifferent to people, then cold and almost impassive, as if wrapped in an unbreakable rind, and finally a heart of stone.
But, as the drop digs the stone, so the tears slowly hollow out hardened hearts.
Thus we witness the miracle of sadness, of good sadness that leads to sweetness.
We understand, then, why spiritual teachers insist on compunction.
Saint Benedict invites us every day to “confess to God with tears and groans our past sins” [4], and affirms that by praying “we will not be heard by our words, but by purity of heart and compunction that tears away” [5].
And if for St. John Chrysostom a single tear extinguishes a brazier of sins [6], the Imitation of Christ recommends: “Abandon yourself to compunction of heart”, since “out of lightness of heart and disregard for our faults we often do not realize the troubles of our souls” [7].
Compunction is the remedy, because it brings us back to the truth of ourselves, so that the depth of our sinfulness reveals the infinitely greater reality of our being forgiven, the joy of being forgiven.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Isaac of Nineveh said: “He who forgets the measure of his sins forgets the measure of God’s grace to him.”[8]
It is true, dear brother priests, that every interior rebirth of ours is always born from the encounter between our misery and his mercy – our misery and his mercy meet – every interior rebirth passes through our poverty of spirit which allows the Holy Spirit to enrich us.
It is in this light that we can understand the strong affirmations of so many spiritual teachers. Let us think of the paradoxical words of Saint Isaac: “He who knows his own sins … He is greater than he who raises the dead through prayer. He who weeps for himself for an hour is greater than he who serves the whole world with contemplation. He who is given to knowing himself is greater than he who is given to seeing angels.”[9]
Dear brother priests, the Lord does not ask of us, his Pastors, to make contemptuous judgments about those who do not believe, but love and tears for those who are far away. The difficult situations that we see and experience, the lack of faith, the sufferings that we touch, in contact with a full heart, do not inspire determination in polemics, but perseverance in mercy. How much we need to be free from harshness and recrimination, from selfishness and ambition, from rigidity and dissatisfaction, in order to entrust ourselves and entrust ourselves to God and to find in Him a peace that will save us from every storm! Let us worship, intercede, and weep for others—we will allow the Lord to do wonders. And let us not be afraid: He will surprise us!
Our ministry will benefit from this. Today, in a secular society, we run the risk of being very active and at the same time of feeling powerless, with the result that we lose enthusiasm and are tempted to “pull the oars in the boat”, to close ourselves in complaint and to let the greatness of problems prevail over the greatness of God. When this happens, we become bitter and prickly, always gossiping, always finding an opportunity to complain. If, on the other hand, bitterness and remorse are directed at one’s own heart and not at the world, the Lord will not fail to visit us and raise us up. As the Imitation of Christ exhorts us to do: “Do not carry within you the affairs of others, do not interfere even with what the most prominent people do; but always and above all watch over yourselves, and address your exhortation especially to yourselves, before other people, even your loved ones. Do not be sad if you do not receive the favour of men; what should weigh you down, sadden you, is the knowledge that you are not fully and surely on the path of goodness”.[11]
Finally, I would like to emphasize an essential aspect: compunction is not so much the fruit of our practice, but it is a grace and as such must be asked for in prayer. Repentance is a gift of God, it is the fruit of the action of the Holy Spirit. To make it easier for them to grow, I’m sharing two little tips. The first is not to look at life and the call in a perspective of efficiency and immediacy, linked only to today and its urgencies and expectations, but in the whole of the past and the future. Of the past, remembering God’s faithfulness – God is faithful – remembering his forgiveness, anchoring ourselves to his love; and of the future, thinking of the eternal goal to which we are called, the ultimate goal of our existence.
Dear brother priests, broadening our horizons helps us to expand our hearts, it stimulates us to return to ourselves with the Lord and to live compunction. A second piece of advice, which comes as a consequence: let us rediscover the need to dedicate ourselves to a prayer that is not due and functional, but gratuitous, calm and prolonged.
Brothers, how is your prayer? Let’s go back to worship – did you forget to worship? –
And let us return to the prayer of the heart. We repeat: Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
We feel the greatness of God in our lowliness as sinners, to look within ourselves and let his gaze pass through us. We will rediscover the wisdom of Holy Mother Church, who always introduces us to prayer with the invocation of the poor who cry out: O God, come and save me.
Dear brothers, let us finally return to Saint Peter and his tears. The altar placed above his tomb cannot fail to make us think of how many times we who say there every day: “Take, and eat, all of you: this is my Body offered in sacrifice for you” How often we disappoint and sadden the One who loves us to the point of making our hands the instruments of his presence.
It is good, then, to make our own those words with which we prepare ourselves in a low voice: ” Receive us, Lord, humble and contrite” and again: “Wash me, Lord, from my guilt, from my sin, make me pure.”
In all these things, brothers, we are comforted by the certainty given to us today by the Word: the Lord, anointed with the anointing (cf. Lk 4:18), has come “to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted” (Is 61:1). Therefore, if the heart is broken, he can be bandaged and healed by Jesus.
Thank you, dear priests, thank you for your open and docile heart; thank you for your efforts and thank you for your tears;
Thank you because you bring the wonder of mercy – always forgive, be merciful – and bring this mercy, bring God to the brothers and sisters of our time.
Dear priests, may the Lord console you, confirm you and reward you. Thank you.
[1] “The Church has water and tears: the water of Baptism, the tears of Penance” (St. Ambrose, Epistula extra collectionem, I, 12).
[2] “Godly sorrow produces irrevocable repentance leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Cor 7:10).
[3] Cf. Saint John Chrysostom, De compunctione, I, 10.
[4] Rule, IV, 57.
[5] Ibid., XX, 3.
[6] Cfr De paenitentia, VII,5.
[7] Chap. XXI.
[8] Ascetic Discourses (III Coll.), XII.
[9] Ascetic Discourses (I Coll.), XXXIV (Greek verse).
[10] Cf. FF 110.
[11] Chap. XXI.
