Weekly audience: Pope Leo XIV says, ‘there is no cry that God does not hear’
The pope met with about 40,000 people in St Peter's Square. Continuing the Jubilee catechesis on the theme "Jesus Christ our hope", he commented on the episode of the healing of blind Bartimaeus in Jericho, saying that, “we must never give up hope, even when we feel lost.” The pontiff also offered his prayers for the victims of the mass shooting in a school in Graz, Austria. This morning he met with António Guterres, UN Secretary-General.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – About 40,000 people filled St Peter's Square on a sunny morning for the Wednesday general audience with Pope Leo XIV. After the usual tour in popemobile, the pontiff delivered his catechesis, which is part of the Jubilee cycle on the theme "Jesus Christ our hope".
At the centre of today’s text, which Leo read from the parvis of the Petrine Basilica, is the figure of Bartimaeus, the blind man healed by Jesus in Jericho (see Mk 10:40-52).
“[W]e must never give up hope, even when we feel lost,” said Pope Leo XIV, thus beginning his reflection on an “essential aspect” of Jesus’s life: his healings. “Let us trustfully ask the Lord to listen to our cry, and to heal us!” he added.
Bartimaeus, the pope explained, means “son of Timaeus,” a name that describes him “through a relationship, and yet he is dramatically alone.” In fact, he also “fails to live up to what he is called to be.”
He is still, sitting along the road, does not follow the crowd that is around Jesus, but he uses his resources, namely the cry: “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” (v. 47). He is blind, “but paradoxically he sees better than the others and he recognizes who Jesus is!”
Since “there is no cry that God does not hear,” Christ stops and calls him, spurring “him to get up again,” to trust “in his ability to walk.”
Bartimaeus walks again, but to do so he first throws away his cloak. “For a beggar, the cloak is everything: it is security, it is the house, it is the defence that protects him,” Leo explained.
Indeed, often what blocks people from making a movement, a qualitative leap, are precisely “our apparent securities,” which “stand in our way – what we have put on to defend ourselves and which instead prevent us from walking.”
For Bartimaeus, it is a matter of exposing all his “vulnerability”, a fundamental step for every “journey of healing”.
Jesus asks him what he can do for him, he does not take his desires for granted. The beggar uses the verb anablepein, which means “to see again” or “to look up”, Pope Leo explained.
The beggar “does not want only to see again; he wants to regain his dignity!” Hence, “What saves Bartimaeus, and each one of us, is faith. Jesus heals us so that we can become free,” the pontiff said.
At the end of the audience, Pope Leo XIV offered his prayers for the victims of the multiple shootings that took place yesterday in a school in Graz, Austria, which left at least 11 people dead. “I am close to the families, teachers, and schoolmates. May the Lord receive these children of his in his peace,” he said.
Then, addressing Italian-speaking pilgrims, after greetings in other languages, he added: “Finally, my thoughts go to the young people, the sick and newlyweds. Next Sunday we will celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. I hope that the contemplation of the Trinitarian mystery will introduce you ever more into divine Love”.
This morning at 9:00, Pope Leo XIV met privately with António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations in the study of the Paul VI Hall. This is the first meeting between the two men since Cardinal Robert Prevost became pope.
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