“Today’s biblical Readings make us understand that God doesn’t want so much to reveal to us that He exists, but, rather, that He is the ‘God with us,’ who loves us, is interested in our personal story and takes care of each one of us, beginning with the littlest and the neediest,” Pope Francis said on May 27, 2018.
His remarks came before praying the noonday Angelus with the crowd of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square. He reminded listeners that God isn’t just “up there in Heaven” but also “down here on earth”.
He cited the example of St. Paul, who experienced the transformation of God’s love and understood God’s desire to be a father to him. Paul experienced God as a “daddy” rather than a distant father:
“Saint Paul (Cf. Romans 8:14-17), who experienced personally this transformation wrought by the God-Love, communicates to us His desire to be called Father, rather “Daddy,” with the total trust of a child that abandons himself in the arms of one who gave him life,” Francis explained. “The Holy Spirit — the Apostle recalls again — acts in us so that Jesus Christ isn’t reduced to a personage of the past, but that we feel Him close, our contemporary, and we experience the joy of being beloved children of God.
“Finally, in the Gospel, the risen Lord promises to remain with us forever: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20). And, in fact, thanks to this His presence and to the strength of His Spirit, we can carry out serenely the mission that He entrusts to us: to proclaim and witness His Gospel to all and thus deepen communion with Him and the joy stemming from it.”
The Holy Father concluded by exhorting those present to “contemplate the mystery of a God that creates incessantly, redeems and sanctifies, always with love and for love, and to every creature that receives Him He gives the gift to reflect a ray of His beauty, goodness, and truth…the task of every baptized person is the same as that entrusted by Jesus to His disciples: and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).”
The Holy Father Full Address
