Hajja Salesjana

In his mass Pope Francis encouraged attendees to pray to God by praising him, saying that remembering the good he has done, particularly how he created us in love, helps us to know how to do so. “Prayers of praise bring us this joy, (the joy of) being happy before the Lord. Let’s make a real effort to rediscover this!” the Pope said in his homily. A starting point for this can be to remember how “God chose me before the creation of the world,” he said, adding that our names are in “God’s heart (and) in God’s bowels, just as the baby is inside its mother.” Pope Francis began his reflections by returning to the reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in which the apostle praises God for the gifts he has given, and recalls how “he chose us in him from before the foundation of the world.” When it comes to prayer, most of us know how to ask for things that we want and even thank the Lord for what he has done, but “a prayer of praise” is a bit harder, the Roman Pontiff observed, because we are not used to praying like that. One thing that can help learn how to do this is to remember “all of the things that the Lord has done for us in our lives,” he said. “In Him – in Christ – He chose us before the creation of the world,” the Bishop of Rome continued, saying that when we pray, we can say something like: “’Blessed are you, Lord, because You chose me!’ (This) is the joy of a paternal and tender closeness.” Although at first it might be difficult to conceive that God knew us before the creation of the world and that our names were written on his heart, “This is the truth! This is the revelation!” the Pope explained. “If we do not believe this then we are not Christian!” “We may be steeped in a theist religiosity, but not Christian! The Christian is a chosen one, the Christian is someone who has been chosen in God’s heart before the creation of the world,” he went on, noting that knowledge of this should give us both confidence and joy. Because this creation is a mystery, we can only understand it by entering into the Mystery of Jesus Christ himself, who “poured by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) Photo by Sixteen Miles Out - www.unsplash.com 14 Jannar-Marzu 2022 hajja