In his homily at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis said that in order to dialogue with the greatness of the Lord, one must safeguard and embrace our “smallness”.
The Holy Father underlined the personal relationship that God shares with his people.
The dialogue between God and his people, he said, is not a dialogue between an all-powerful being with one large group of people. Rather, it is an individual relationship he shares with his people, one by one. This relationship is evidenced in the story of Creation.
“The story of creation is an image that makes us see this: it is the same Lord who with his hands, handcrafts man and gives his a name: ‘Your name is Adam’”, he said.
“And so begins that relationship between God and the person. And there is another thing, there is a relationship between God and us little ones: God, the great, and us little ones. God, when he must choose a person, as well as his people, always chooses the little ones.”
In choosing Israel because it was the least powerful among the peoples of the world, Pope Francis continued, the Lord shows His preference for the little ones. Reflecting on the first reading, which recounted the anointing of David as king of Israel, the Holy Father focused on God choosing based on a man’s heart and not his stature. “God chooses David, the smallest, who was disregarded by his father,” he said.
“All of us through Baptism have been elected by the Lord. We are all elected. He has chosen us one by one. He has given us a name and looks at us. There is a dialogue, because that is how the Lord loves. Even David later becomes king and made a mistake. He maybe made many, but the Bible tells us of two big mistakes, two mistakes that really fall heavy. What did David do? He humiliated himself. He returned to his smallness and said: ‘I am a sinner’. And he asked for forgiveness and did penance.”
David’s smallness is also reflected after committing his second mistake, when he recognizes his sin and asks the Lord to punish him rather than the people. “David guarded his smallness, with repentance, with prayer, with weeping,” the Pope observed. This, he stressed, is the sign of true Christian faithfulness.
“Christian faithfulness, our faithfulness, is to simply guard our smallness, so that we can dialogue with the Lord. To guard our smallness,” the Pope said.
“For this reason humility, meekness, and gentleness are so important in the life of the Christian, because it is a container of smallness which the Lord likes to see. And there will always be a dialogue between our smallness and the greatness of the Lord.”
Concluding his homily, Pope Francis invoked the intercession of David and the Virgin Mary so that the Lord may “give us the grace to guard our smallness before Him.” (J.A.E.)
