Pope Francis traveled to northern Italy on July 7, 2024, for the close of the annual Italian Catholic Social Week.
In Trieste, the Holy Father celebrated a public Mass. The Social Week this year was held July 3-7, with the theme: "At the heart of democracy: Participation between history and future."
In addition to the Mass, the Pope met with participants in the Catholic Social Week and then with representatives of other Christian Churches and religions present in the city and from academia, as well as with a group of migrants and people with disabilities.
Here is a draft Vatican translation of his homily.
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To rekindle hope in broken hearts and support the burdens of the journey, God has always raised up prophets among His people. Yet, as today's First Reading recounts in the story of Ezekiel, they often encountered a rebellious people, “obstinate children with hardened hearts” (Ez 2:4), and were rejected.
Jesus, too, experienced the same as the prophets. He returned to Nazareth, His homeland, among the people He grew up with, but He was not recognized and was even rejected: “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him” (Jn 1:11). The Gospel tells us that Jesus “was a cause of scandal to them” (Mk 6:3), but the word “scandal” does not refer to something obscene or indecent as we use it today; scandal means “a stumbling block,” an obstacle, something that hinders and prevents you from going further. Let us ask ourselves: what is the obstacle that prevents believing in Jesus?
Let us ask ourselves: what is the obstacle that prevents believing in Jesus?
Listening to the discussions of His fellow townspeople, we see that they stop only at His earthly history, at His family origin, and so they cannot understand how such wisdom, and even the ability to perform miracles, could come from the son of Joseph the carpenter; that is, from an ordinary person. The scandal, then, is the humanity of Jesus. The obstacle preventing these people from recognizing God’s presence in Jesus is the fact that He is human, simply Joseph the carpenter’s son: How can God, the Almighty, reveal Himself in the fragility of human flesh? How can an omnipotent and strong God, who created the earth and freed His people from slavery, become weak enough to come in the flesh and lower Himself to wash the disciples’ feet?
Brothers and sisters, this is the scandal: a faith founded on a human God, who lowers Himself towards humanity, who cares for it, who is moved by our wounds, who takes on our weariness, who for us is broken like bread. A strong and powerful God, who is on my side and satisfies me in everything is attractive; a weak God, who dies on the cross out of love and Who asks me to overcome all selfishness and offer my life for the salvation of the world, is an uncomfortable God.
Yet, as we stand before the Lord Jesus and gaze upon the challenges that confront us, the many social and political issues discussed even in this Social Week, the concrete lives of our people and their struggles, we can say that what we need today is precisely this: the scandal of faith. Not a religiosity closed in on itself, that looks up to heaven without caring about what happens on earth and celebrates liturgies in the temple but forgets the dust blowing in our streets. Instead, we need the scandal of faith, a faith rooted in the God who became man and, therefore, a human faith, a faith of flesh, that enters history, that touches people’s lives, that heals broken hearts, that becomes a leaven of hope and a seed of a new world.
It is a faith that awakens consciences from lethargy, that puts its finger in the wounds of society, that raises questions about the future of humanity and history; it is a restless faith that helps us overcome mediocrity and indolence of heart, that becomes a thorn in the flesh of a society often anesthetized and dazed by consumerism. It is, above all, a faith that disrupts the calculations of human selfishness, that denounces evil, that points out injustices, that disturbs the schemes of those who, in the shadow of power, play with the lives of the weak.
A poet of this city, describing in a lyric his usual return home in the evening, says he crosses a somewhat dark street, a place of decay where the people and the goods of the port are “detritus,” that is, scraps of humanity; yet here, he writes, “passing by, I find the infinite in humility,” because the prostitute and the sailor, the quarrelsome woman and the soldier, “are all creatures of life and pain; in them, as in me, the Lord stirs” (U. SABA, “Città vecchia,” in Il canzoniere (1900-1954) Edizione definitiva, Torino, Einaudi, 1961).
And we, who are sometimes scandalized unnecessarily by so many little things, would do well instead to ask ourselves: Why are we not scandalized in the face of rampant evil, life being humiliated, labour issues, the sufferings of migrants?
Let us not forget: God is hidden in the dark corners of life and of our cities, His presence reveals itself precisely in the faces marked by suffering and where degradation seems to triumph. God’s infinity is concealed in human misery, the Lord stirs and becomes a friendly presence precisely in the wounded flesh of the least, the forgotten, and the discarded. And we, who are sometimes scandalized unnecessarily by so many little things, would do well instead to ask ourselves: Why are we not scandalized in the face of rampant evil, life being humiliated, labour issues, the sufferings of migrants? Why do we remain apathetic and indifferent to the injustices of the world? Why do we not take to heart the situation of the prisoners, which even from this city of Trieste rises as a cry of anguish?
Dear friends, Jesus lived in His flesh the prophecy of everyday life, entering into the daily lives and stories of the people, manifesting God’s compassion within the human and fragile affairs of wounded humanity. And because of this, some people were scandalized by Him, He became an obstacle, He was rejected event to the point of being tried and condemned; yet, He remained faithful to His mission, He did not hide behind ambiguity, did not compromise with the logic of political and religious power. He made His life an offering of love to the Father. So, too, we Christians are called to be prophets and witnesses of the Kingdom of God, in all the situations we live in, in every place we inhabit.
From this city of Trieste, overlooking Europe, a crossroads of peoples and cultures, a borderland, let us nurture the dream of a new civilization founded on peace and fraternity; let us not be scandalized by Jesus but, on the contrary, let us be indignant at all those situations where life is degraded, wounded, and killed; let us bring the prophecy of the Gospel into our flesh, with our choices even before our words. And to this Church of Trieste, I would like to say: Go forward! Continue to be on the front line to spread the Gospel of hope, especially towards those arriving from the Balkan route and towards all those who, in body or spirit, need to be encouraged and comforted. Let us commit ourselves together: because by discovering that we are loved by the Father, we can live as brothers and sisters to all.
