There is a question that shows one has understood the meaning of life, Pope Leo XIV reflected during the second general audience of his pontificate on May 28, 2025, in St. Peter's Square. Before the 40,000 people who gathered for the event, the Pope warned against the temptation to live in too much of a hurry, as haste "very often prevents us from feeling compassion.
"Those who think that their own journey must take precedence are not willing to stop for another."
Since the resumption of general audiences on May 21, the new pope has been continuing the cycle of catechesis on hope begun by his predecessor Francis on December 18, 2024. This theme was chosen as part of the Jubilee, with its theme: Pilgrims of Hope.
This morning, after a tour of the crowd in the popemobile, Leo XIV meditated on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which was very dear to Pope Francis. For example, the theological heart of Fratelli Tutti is poured out in a lengthy meditation on Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan.
"Let us turn, then, to the Sacred Heart, model of true humanity, and ask him to make our heart ever more like his," Pope Leo encouraged.
... life is made up of encounters, and in these encounters, we emerge for what we are. We find ourselves in front of others, faced with their fragility and weakness, and we can decide what to do: to take care of them or pretend nothing is wrong. A priest and a Levite go down that same road. They are people who serve in the Temple of Jerusalem, who live in the sacred space. And yet, the practice of worship does not automatically lead to being compassionate. Indeed, before being a religious matter, compassion is a question of humanity! Before being believers, we are called to be human.
Pope Leo noted how the Samaritan's humanity is spotlighted.
The Evangelist Luke ponders the actions of the Samaritan, whom we call “good”, but in the text he is simply a person: a Samaritan approaches, because if you want to help someone, you cannot think of keeping your distance, you have to get involved, get dirty, perhaps be contaminated; he binds the wounds after cleaning them with oil and wine; he loads him onto his horse, taking on the burden, because one who truly helps if one is willing to feel the weight of the other’s pain; he takes him to an inn where he spends money, “two silver coins”, more or less two days of work; and he undertakes to return and eventually pay more, because the other is not a package to deliver, but someone to care for.
Dear brothers and sisters, when will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion.
Let us pray, then, that we can grow in humanity, so that our relationships may be truer and richer in compassion. Let us ask the Heart of Jesus for the grace increasingly to have the same feelings as him.
