POPE FRANCIS

God’s feelings

Martedì, 19 February 2019

[Multimedia]

“Our times are no better today than they were during the Great Flood”, and children are the first victims of the world’s wars and injustices, while the poor pay the highest price, Pope Francis said during his homily on Tuesday, 19 February. This is why we should have the same feelings as God, and we should feel regret and pain, setting aside “sentimentalism” or abstract ideas and entering “the mystery of God’s heart”. Taking his cue from the day’s reading from Genesis (6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10), which recounts the Great Flood, the Holy Father paused to reflect on two aspects: God saw the evil of mankind and regretted creating man on earth and this “grieved him in his heart”. This means, the Pontiff continued, that God has feelings and is capable of anger. Though at first he reveals himself as a father, he is not an abstract God.

“We know for certain that when he became flesh, he had the capacity to feel like we do, with body and soul, to feel in his heart, God’s heart”. And, the Holy Father continued, “God the Father who loves us ... is capable of getting angry”. However, “our God loves us with the heart; he does not love us with ideas”. Have you ever thought, Pope Francis asked the faithful, that when “he disciplines us, like a good father, he disciplines us with his heart”, suffering from this more than we do.

In the same way, “our prayer, our relationship with God is not a relationship of ideas, but a heart to heart relationship”. Today’s humanity should weep like Jesus “at the problems we have, at the world’s calamities, the poor, the hungry, the persecuted, the tortured”. Therefore, the Holy Father continued, we should invoke the grace to have “a heart like God’s heart”, because, like Jesus’ heart a human heart is “divine”. Thus, “let us enter the mystery of the sorrowful heart of God who is Father, and let us speak with Him as we witness the many calamities of our time”.