Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

*HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS*
*Tuesday, 8 December 2015 Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary*
In a few moments I will have the joy of opening the Holy Door of Mercy.  We
carry out this act – as I did in Bangui
<http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/events/event.dir.html/content/vaticanevents/en/2015/11/29/repcentrafricanamessa.html>
–
so simple yet so highly symbolic, in the light of the word of God which we
have just heard.  That word highlights the *primacy of grace*.  Again and
again these readings make us think of the words by which the angel Gabriel
told an astonished young girl of the mystery which was about to enfold her:
“Hail, full of grace” (*Lk *1:28).
The Virgin Mary was called to rejoice above all because of what the Lord
accomplished in her.  God’s grace enfolded her and made her worthy of
becoming the Mother of Christ.  When Gabriel entered her home, even the
most profound and impenetrable of mysteries became for her a cause for joy,
a cause for faith, a cause for abandonment to the message revealed to
her.  *The
fullness of grace can transform the human heart* and enable it to do
something so great as to change the course of human history.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception expresses the grandeur of God’s
love.  Not only does he forgive sin, but in Mary he even averts the
original sin present in every man and woman who comes into this world.
This is *the love of God which precedes, anticipates and saves.*  The
beginning of the history of sin in the Garden of Eden yields to a plan of
saving love.  The words of Genesis reflect our own daily experience: we are
constantly tempted to disobedience, a disobedience expressed in wanting to
go about our lives without regard for God’s will.  This is the enmity which
keeps striking at people’s lives, setting them in opposition to God’s plan.
Yet the history of sin can only be understood in the light of God’s love
and forgiveness.  Sin can only be understood in this light.  Were sin the
only thing that mattered, we would be the most desperate of creatures.  But
the promised triumph of Christ’s love enfolds everything in the Father’s
mercy.  The word of God which we have just heard leaves no doubt about
this.  The Immaculate Virgin stands before us as a privileged witness of
this promise and its fulfilment.
This Extraordinary Year is itself a gift of grace.  To pass through the
Holy Door means to rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father who welcomes
everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them.  It is he who
seeks us!  It is he who comes to encounter us!  This will be a year in
which we *grow ever more convinced of God’s mercy*.  How much wrong we do
to God and his grace when we speak of sins being punished by his judgment
before we speak of their being forgiven by his mercy (cf. Saint Augustine, *De
Praedestinatione Sanctorum*, 12, 24)!  But that is the truth.  We have to
put mercy before judgment, and in any event God’s judgement will always be
in the light of his mercy.  In passing through the Holy Door, then, may we
feel that *we ourselves are part of this mystery of love*, *of tenderness*.
Let us set aside all fear and dread, for these do not befit men and women
who are loved.  Instead, let us experience *the joy of encountering that
grace which transforms all things*.
Today, here in Rome and in all the dioceses of the world, as we pass
through the Holy Door, we also want to remember another door, which fifty
years ago the Fathers of the *Second Vatican Council
<http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/index.htm>*
opened
to the world.  This anniversary cannot be remembered only for the legacy of
the Council’s documents, which testify to a great advance in faith.  Before
all else, the Council was an encounter.  A genuine *encounter between the
Church and the men and women of our time*.
An encounter marked by the power of the Spirit, who impelled the Church to
emerge from the shoals which for years had kept her self-enclosed so as to
set out once again, with enthusiasm, on her missionary journey.  It was the
resumption of a journey of encountering people where they live: in their
cities and homes, in their workplaces.  Wherever there are people, the
Church is called to reach out to them and to bring the joy of the Gospel,
and the mercy and forgiveness of God.  After these decades, we again take
up this missionary drive with the same power and enthusiasm.  The Jubilee
challenges us to this openness, and demands that we not neglect *the spirit
which emerged from Vatican II, the spirit of the Samaritan*, as Blessed
Paul VI expressed it at the conclusion of the Council.  May our passing
through the Holy Door today commit us to making our own the mercy of the
Good Samaritan.