Celebrate the first mass in the Sistine Chapel where, less than 24 hours earlier, it was still a simple cardinal voter. Begins with a greeting on English, Pope Leo XIV, reminding the cardinals who elected him that “The words of the Responsorial Psalm:” I will sing a new song to the Lord, because he has made wonders “. And not only with me », Conitnua Pope Leone,” but with all of us. My cardinal brothers, while we celebrate this morning, I invite you to recognize the wonders that the Lord has accomplished, the blessings that the Lord continues to pour on all of us through the Ministry of Peter. You called me to bring that cross and to be blessed with this mission, and I know I can count on each of you so that you walk with me, while we continue as a church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers to announce the good news, to announce the Gospel ». Then reads in Italian. In his homily on the Gospel of Matteo who speaks proper to Peter’s investment by Jesus as head of the Church, recalls the central question of the master to Peter about his identity and on the answer of these: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”. This is how Peter “expresses the heritage that for two thousand years the Church, through the Apostolic Succession, has kept, deepens and transmits. Jesus is Christ, the Son of the Living God, that is, the only savior and the reveal of the Father’s face ». God made himself, embellishing himself in a child, “close and accessible to men”. And, the Pope continues, “has shown us a model of holy humanity that we can all imitate, together with the promise of an eternal destiny that instead exceeds every limit and capacity. Pietro, in his response, captures all of these things: the gift of God and the path to go to let them transform, inseparable dimensions of salvation, entrusted to the Church because the announcements for the good of mankind ».
And then he underlines that God, calling him to succeed Pietro through the vote of the Cardinal Vlectors, entrusted him to him “this treasure”, “because, with his help, he is a faithful administrator in favor of the whole mystical body of the Church; So that it is more and more cities placed on the mountain, an ark of salvation that navigates through the waves of history, a beacon that illuminates the nights of the world ». And this is not for the “magnificence of its structures or for the grandeur of his buildings – such as the monuments in which we are -, as well as through the holiness of his members, of that” people that God has purchased themselves because they proclaim the admirable works of him, who called you from the darkness to his wonderful light “”.
To the question of Jesus: “Who is the people say that they are the Son of man?”, Can you answer in two ways. A response from the rich and powerful world. Which says that there is a “world that considers Jesus a person totally without importance, at most a curious character, who can arouse wonder with his unusual way of speaking and acting. And so, when his presence becomes annoying for the instances of honesty and the moral needs he recalls, this “world” will not hesitate to reject it and eliminate it “.
Another “possible answer to Jesus’ question: that of ordinary people. For them the Nazarene is not a “charlatan”: he is a right man, one who has courage, who speaks well and who says right things, like other great prophets of the history of Israel. For this they follow him, at least until they can do it without too many risks and inconveniences. But only a man consider it, and therefore, in the moment of danger, during passion, they too abandon it and go away, disappointed “.
They are both current attitudes. «Even today there are not few contexts in which the Christian faith is considered an absurd thing, for weak and not very intelligent people; Contexts in which other safety are preferred to it, such as technology, money, success, power, pleasure “, says Leone XIV. “These are environments”, he concludes, “in which it is not easy to testify and announce the Gospel and where those who believe is derided, opposed, despised, or at most endured and compact. Yet, precisely for this reason, they are places where the mission urgently urgently urges, because the lack of faith often brings with them dramas such as the loss of the meaning of life, the oblivion of mercy, the violation of the dignity of the person in its most dramatic forms, the family crisis and many other wounds that our society suffers and not a little “.
And then there is no shortage of contexts in which “Jesus, although appreciated as a man, is reduced only to a kind of charismatic leader or superman, and this not only among non -believers, but also among many baptized, which end up living, at this level, in a de facto atheism”.
The new Pope does not frighten, on the contrary, it recalls that it is this “the world that is entrusted to us, in which, as Pope Francis taught us many times, we are called to testify to the joyful faith in Jesus Salvatore. Therefore, even for us, it is essential to repeat: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God” ».
We must do it “first of all in our personal relationship with him, in the commitment of a daily path of conversion. But then also, as a Church, living together our belonging to the Lord and bringing their good news to everyone, “he says quoting the Council Vatican II.
“I say this first of all for me, as a successor of Peter”, he concludes, “while I start my mission as bishop of the Church which is in Rome, called to preside over the universal Church in Charity, according to the famous expression of Sant’Ignazio di Antiochia. He, conducted in chains towards this city, a place of his imminent sacrifice, wrote to the Christians who were there: “Then I will really be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world will not see my body”. He referred to being devoured by the belves in the circus – and so it happened -, but his words recall an indispensable commitment for anyone in the Church in the Church a ministry of authority: to disappear because Christ remains small, to make himself small so that he is known and glorified, spend all the way because nobody is missing the opportunity to know and love him “.
At the beginning of his mission, the Pope asks God who gives him “this grace, today and always, with the help of the very tender intercession of Mary Mother of the Church”.
