Pope calls us back to our first enthusiasm in following Jesus

Francis offers Mass for artists who show us the way of beauty.

Let us pray today for artists, who have this great capacity for creativity and who through the way of beauty, show us the path to follow. May the Lord give all of us the grace of creativity in this time.

That was the intention the Holy Father offered for his morning Mass of April 27.

In his homily, Pope Francis reflected on how the crowds lost their way somewhat after seeing Jesus multiply the bread and fish. They had begun following him because of their enthusiasm for his word and teaching — “they stayed all day listening to Jesus without becoming bored, without growing tired or being tired; they were there, and happy.”

But when they saw that Jesus was able to feed the crowds, they wanted to make him king, to take a more worldly path. When they find Our Lord again, he corrects their intentions, bringing them back to their original attitude.

This brings us to think that many times in life we begin to follow Jesus, go after Jesus, with the values of the Gospel, and half way along, we get another idea. We see some signs and we distance ourselves, and we conform ourselves to something more temporal, more material, perhaps more worldly. We lose the memory of the first enthusiasm that we had when we heard Jesus speak.

The Lord always brings us to return to the first encounter, the first moment in which he looked at us, spoke to us, and caused to be born in us a desire to follow him. This is a grace to ask of the Lord, because in life we will always have a temptation to distance ourselves when we see something else. “This will go well …. this is a good idea … ” We are distancing ourselves.

The grace of returning always to the first call, the first moment: Not to forget, not to forget my story, when Jesus saw me and looked at me with love, and said, “This is your path.” When Jesus, through so many people, made me understand which path is the path of the Gospel, and not other paths that are a little worldly, with other values. To return to the first encounter.

I’ve always been struck that among the things Jesus said on the morning of the Resurrection was “Go to my brothers and tell them to go to Galilee, that they will find me there.” Galilee was the place of the first encounter. There, they had met Jesus. Every one of us has his own “Galilee” within, our own moment when Jesus approached us and said, “Follow me.”

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The author of the Letter to the Hebrews also reminds us of this: Remember the first days. Memory. Remembering the first encounter. Remembering “my Galilee,” when the Lord looked at me with love, and said, “Follow me.”