MASS FOR THE CENTENARY OF THE ARMENIAN METZ YEGHERN: JESUS FILLS THE ABYSS OF SIN WITH THE DEPTH OF HIS MERCY
States News Service
April 13, 2015 Monday
VATICAN CITY
The following information was released by the Vatican Information
Service (VIS):
On the second Sunday of Easter, or Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis
celebrated Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to commemorate the
centenary of the martyrdom (Metz Yeghern, or Great Evil) of the
Armenian People, and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church St. Gregory
of Narek (c. 951 c. 1003), Armenian monk, theologian, poet and
philosopher, whose feast day is celebrated on 27 February.
His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, Patriarch of Cilicia of the
Armenian Catholics concelebrated with the Holy Father, in the presence
of His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All
Armenians and His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of
Cilicia. The president of the Republic of Armenia, Serz Sargsyan,
also attended the Mass.
In his homily, the Pope commented on the Gospel of St. John, who
was in the Upper Room with the other disciples on the evening of
the first day after the Sabbath, and who tells us that Jesus came
and stood among them, and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ and He showed
them His hands and His side; He showed them His wounds. And in this
way they realised that it was not an apparition: it was truly Him,
the Lord, and they were filled with joy. On the eighth day Jesus
came once again into the Upper Room and showed His wounds to Thomas,
so that he could touch them as he had wished to, in order to believe
and thus become himself a witness to the Resurrection.
To us also, on this Sunday which Saint John Paul II wished to dedicate
to Divine Mercy, the Lord shows us, through the Gospel, his wounds.
They are wounds of mercy. It is true: the wounds of Jesus are wounds
of mercy. ‘With His stripes we are healed’. Jesus invites us to behold
these wounds, to touch them as Thomas did, to heal our lack of belief.
Above all, He invites us to enter into the mystery of these wounds,
which is the mystery of His merciful love.
Through these wounds, as in a light-filled opening, we can see the
entire mystery of Christ and of God, said Pope Francis: His Passion,
His earthly life filled with compassion for the weak and the sick His
incarnation in the womb of Mary. And we can retrace the whole history
of salvation: the prophecies especially about the Servant of the Lord,
the Psalms, the Law and the Covenant; to the liberation from Egypt, to
the first Passover and to the blood of the slaughtered lambs; and again
from the Patriarchs to Abraham, and then all the way back to Abel,
whose blood cried out from the earth. All of this we can see in the
wounds of Jesus, crucified and risen; with Mary, in her Magnificat, we
can perceive that, ‘His mercy extends from generation to generation’.
He continued, Faced with the tragic events of human history we can
feel crushed at times, asking ourselves, ‘Why?’. Humanity’s evil can
appear in the world like an abyss, a great void: empty of love, empty
of goodness, empty of life. And so we ask: how can we fill this abyss?
For us it is impossible; only God can fill this emptiness that evil
brings to our hearts and to human history. It is Jesus, God made man,
Who died on the Cross and Who fills the abyss of sin with the depth
of His mercy.
The saints teach us that the world is changed beginning with the
conversion of one’s own heart, and that this happens through the
mercy of God. And so, whether faced with my own sins or the great
tragedies of the world, ‘my conscience would be distressed, but it
would not be in turmoil, for I would recall the wounds of the Lord:
He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that
it cannot be pardoned by the death of Christ?’.
Keeping our gaze on the wounds of the Risen Jesus, we can sing with
the Church: ‘His love endures forever’; eternal is his mercy. And
with these words impressed on our hearts, let us go forth along the
paths of history, led by the hand of our Lord and Saviour, our life
and our hope, concluded the Pontiff.