1 John 5: 14-15
And we have this confidence in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
And if we know that he hears us in regard to whatever we ask, we know that what we have asked him for is ours.
Dear brothers and sisters,
We pray this evening for the sick, and ask for their peace and healing. We do this every month, with insistence and faith. May the Lord give them life, more life, may the Lord give them peace, more peace.
Jesus exhorts us to pray in faith, to knock and the door will be opened to us. Indeed, Jesus' last exhortation on prayer, in the Gospel of John, states: ‘On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God’. The Father loves us, the Father listens to us. Let us never give up praying, even if it may appear childish to ask like a child, often when a different reality imposes itself.
We have listened to the first letter of John. We have great confidence in him, whatever we ask of him, according to his will, he listens to us. Trust, here in Greek, is parresìa, that is, it is a firm certainty that our voice is not lost in noise and distraction, as it happens for many voices or for many cries, especially for the poor, that are thrown in the world and not received by anyone. He listens to us.
Yet, at times we fear or have the doubt that our prayer is not heard. Maybe we do not have the patience of waiting. At other times it appears evident that there is no answer. Maybe we are not asking according to the will of God. Jesus reminds of always forgiving when we pray, not hatred, but love accompanies prayer. However, the will of God, as taught by the Scriptures , the will of God that we pray is always freeing us, freeing us from evil, from slavery, from death, from sin. The will of God is freeing us. That is why we find serenity and trust saying: Thy will be done! As we repeat in the prayer of Our Father. There is a mystery of a greater love, that dwells this will of God. The letter affirms: ‘And if we know that he hears us in regard to whatever we ask, we know that what we have asked him is already ours.’ And we see, in one way or another, the signs of a deep gift, that at times we do not grasp, but is a reality, a gift we know. Because we have asked for it in prayer and we know we posses it since when we pray.
Just a few hours ago our dear sister Rosa died. She was well known, loved in the Community, esteemed for her various and passionate service, in Rome and also in Uganda, in Africa. It is not a situation of telling us now who she was, but above all to remember the main axis, the heart of her life: love for life, love for the Gospel, love for the Community.
This is why, we would have desired to have her company with us for long years. For this we hoped and we prayed. A prayer that was accorded and in syntony with Rosa's attachment to life and her tenacious struggle against disease, which brought her to taste all the days of her life, up to yesterday.
And we now feel the bitterness of detachment and the lack of her, missing her. The pain is there, but we also see the power of God's mercy that, like a cloak, has covered her from the cold of the disease. No, the Lord has not abandoned her in the hands of death, he has not abandoned her in the hands of evil. He gave her years of life, ten even more, after the beginning of the disease, when, in spite of that, she has been happy and she made people happy. The Lord gave her time to mature faith more, to mature love. It has given her the affectionate care of close and attentive sisters, but also careful brothers and some expert and dedicated. And in these last times, in spite of the increasing of the disease, in spite of her spirit of dignified independence and reserve, it has given her great serenity in entrusting. Entrusting to her sisters and brothers was, so it seems to me, an expression of her trust, mature and profound, parousia. Trust in the Lord, that takes her on his shoulders not to be lost, and he continues to accompany her beyond that border, that we cannot pass if not with prayer.
I would say, entrusting was the climate of her last times. Because entrusting to the Lord is the true expression of tenacious attachment to life, because the Lord is tenaciously attached to the life of each one of us and the names of each one of us, as it is for the name of Rosa, are written in his book.
We are sorrowful, but not in despair and before darkness. ‘We do not want you to be unaware, brothers,’ says the Apostle Paul, ’about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.’
No, even if painful we are not in darkness and ignorance. And we know that those who are no longer with us, like Rosa, will be gathered by the Lord, by means of the Lord Jesus, in the arms of God. That is why the Apostle concludes, and we hear him: ‘Therefore, console one another with these words’. Amen
