I will not hide my profound emotion to be here at Santa Sabina, the place where Saint Dominic still has his cell. I ask him to bless us from on high in heaven, since the Holy Father himself did not hesitate to tell us that Saint Dominic was present in this new little community, the community of Saint John. That is why I profoundly thank the Virgin Mary for having allowed this pilgrimage to Rome to begin here, at Santa Sabina, next to Saint Dominic.
The Holy Spirit must "guide us into all the truth" (Jn. 16:13), to the fullness of truth. We love these words of Jesus very much, this revelation that Saint John communicates to us in his Gospel. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to push us much further, to ask of each of us an always greater fidelity in the search for truth. And the truth is Jesus, for "the Word became flesh" (Jn. 1:14). And the truth is the love which is in the heart of Jesus for the Father. Truth is the heart of Jesus burnt by this divine love, the love of the Father for His Beloved Son. And this truth is revealed to us by Jesus Himself and, ultimately, by the piercing of His heart which--as Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Dominic's beloved daughter said--reveals to us what is ultimate in the victimal state of Jesus at the Cross. It is by means of this ultimate victimal state that Jesus gives us His ultimate revelation: the Father is love, the Son is love, and the Holy Spirit is the One who is the fruit of this eternal love between the Beloved Son and the Father.

This is indeed what we all would like to ask Him today: that in the depths of our heart we might understand that the Father is love, love for us, love for His Beloved Son, love for Mary, for Saint John, and for each one of us. I believe this is what He desires to have us understand in a very particular way this evening. It is not we who wait for Him, it is He who waits for us and it is He who wants to communicate Himself to us in an even stronger and more intimate way than He has done up to now, because He is--if I may venture to say--happy to see us here in Rome, gathered together, united in the same love, in the same search for truth and in a filial piety with respect to our Pope. After the synod on religious life, it is good for us to come to him to express all our affection and to show how happy we are that the Holy Spirit and Jesus have given him to us to be Their representative, Their witness, Their vicar among us, the witness of love. This is indeed what we must always intensely desire--something we must, I should say, beg from the heart of Christ, asking Him that when we live the mystery of the Eucharist we might be truly present for Him and eager to receive all His love. And the love that we receive in the Eucharist is the love of the Father for His Beloved Son, communicated at the Cross where Jesus, in an act of obedience--in total filial obedience--says to His Father that He loves Him more than anything and that He has but one desire: to accomplish His will in its entirety by means of this mystery of the Cross in the very great poverty of the crucified One.

Jesus knows that it is thanks to this act of obedience, realized in poverty and in the total gift of Himself, that the Father can attract Him to Himself in a unique way; that it is thanks to this act that He returns to the Father as a Beloved Son "full of grace and truth" (Jn. 1:14). And in each Mass that we live (if we live it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, if we live it very close to Mary), this is what Jesus wants to help us understand and especially to help us live. He wants to help us live like beloved children who have only one desire, to be attracted to the Father, and He wants this attraction of the Father to take possession of their hearts more and more, to accept for this reason to be poor, to be beggars of love.

The Gospel that we have just heard says this very well. If we come near Jesus to live the Eucharist like the Pharisees, satisfied with ourselves and happy to be considered as "good," generous people capable of doing great things, Jesus cannot transform us into beloved children of the Father. As long as we are satisfied with ourselves Jesus cannot communicate His light and His love to us. We see how this self-satisfaction wounds the heart of Christ. That is why He tells us that He comes for the poor, for those who accept being delegated to the back row, being somewhat ignored. He comes to save us, to save us in His love and through His love.

Jesus comes for the poor first of all. And the more the Holy Spirit, the "Father of the Poor" acts in us, educates us in poverty by communicating to us an always stronger, sweet and intense love, the more He helps us to understand our littleness, our nothingness as creatures. We have received everything from our Creator, our Father. We have received everything from Jesus, our friend, the hidden Bridegroom of our soul. We have received everything from Him at the Cross and it is there that we are born to divine life. Thus let us go to Him while acknowledging our fragility, our littleness, our vulnerability, acknowledging that by ourselves we are nothing and that it is He alone who gives us this unique dignity as beloved children of the Father. This is our joy; and this joy is overflowing, because we cannot dream of a greater joy than to be received by Jesus, by the Father, and it is through the heart of His Beloved Son, this heart wounded at the Cross, that the Father looks at us and loves us. He loves us as He loves His Beloved Son and He draws us to Him as He draws His Beloved Son--at least if we ask this of Him, for He wants to respect our freedom until the end, He wants it to be in a divine spontaneity that we let ourselves be attracted and possessed by Him.

May our joy may be complete (Jn. 16:24; cf. 17:13) because our Mother, the Virgin Mary, is very close to us here and because she wants to help us better understand here during this Eucharist how much she loves us. Mary loves this little religious family, the "Benjamin" in the Church, that wants to be for her what John, the beloved, was for her. We know that it is by being very close to her, Source of our joy, that we might possess within ourselves a fullness of joy. If today's world is so sad, it is because it no longer loves. Everything is crumbling in this world in one way or another. Yet the Holy Father never stops reminding us that there is great hope among the children of God, and in his recent book he asks us to "cross the threshold of hope" and thus to desire to go "to the end" in divine love and to have a fullness of joy for all humanity today. By looking at Christians, by looking at those who desire to be the beloved sons of Mary's heart, may men discover that there is still a very great joy in the world, because there is a very pure love which comes from the heart of Mary Immaculate and which is communicated to us in its fullness.

During this Eucharist let us entrust the deepest, most profound desires of our hearts to the heart of Mary. Entrust to her heart all that wounds us, that overwhelms us, that sometimes makes us sad, so that this divine love which is present in us may be totally victorious in all the struggles, over all the attacks of the devil--which are sometimes so violent--over all the sorrows that can overwhelm us. May we be for Jesus, for the world of today, for all our fellow men, living witnesses of Christ's love for us, of His love for men. May we be witnesses of His joy, of His great victory over death, over lies, over all sorrows, over all suffering. May this victorious love take possession of our hearts, thanks to Mary.

Saturday, October 29, 1994
Homily during Mass at Santa Sabina