ARGENTINA, mda. “As every year, after having gone through the queue, I speak with you. This time I went through the queue with my heart. I’m a bit far away and I can’t share with you this very lovely moment — this moment in which you are walking towards the image of Saint Cajetan.” These were the words of Pope Francis in his video message to the thousands of pilgrim who queued up, often for many hours, in order to reach the shrine of the Patron of bread and work in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Liniers. “However today, the motto of this pilgrimage, a motto chosen by you, selected among many possibilities, the motto speaks today of another meeting, and it says: “With Jesus and Saint Cajetan, We Go to Meet Those in Most Need” he emphasised in the video message broadcast on Channel 21 of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires and projected onto a huge screen before the shrine. The “culture of encounter”, for which Francis called in this video message, is his message. It is the message he lives and that opens the hearts of so many believers and non-believers. Wide, wide open.
“He came every year to celebrate Holy Mass! And right at the beginning he says that he has been on pilgrimage with us from afar. It is wonderful to experience that he is close to us in his diocese at all important dates. He doesn’t forget his people. Everyone was captured when the video message began, there were tears everywhere,” someone reported from Buenos Aires. It was very similar when he phoned on 19 March immediately before the Holy Mass when he took over the Petrine Office. He greeted the thousands who had gathered in the middle of the night on the Plaza de Mayo in order to be there “live” when their Cardinal Bergoglio became Pope. … And their good shepherd remains. He is close without worrying that protocol will be transgressed. He is close without being afraid that he loves too much. He prayed for the victims of the gas explosion in a highrise building in Rosario, and wrote a letter to a priest in Tucuman who is seriously ill. …. He shows that God wanted to give his people a father … and the people show that they need nothing more urgently than the unconditional love of a father. The two young pople who greeted him in the Favela and called him “Father Francis” were the instruments of the Holy Spirit.
This father calls for a culture of encounter
On 7 August the Buenos Aires suburb of Liniers, Argentina, celebrates the fesat of St Kajetan, the Patron of bread and work. From midnight the day before people wait in long queues to enter the shrine and entrust their prayer to St Kajetan. They pray for bread and work, or thank because they have both. The enthusiastic wait is tiring; people wait for hours, the anticipation of faith grows. Some people from the interior have been camping for a week or more close to the shrine. They all want to get into the shrine, they want at least to touch the glass protection the small statue of the saint and express their needs on the day when the Church celebrates their patron, so that he can intercede for them. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was always among the pilgrims, part of the long queue, and the midst of them all. Also this year he calls upon them to build up a culture of encounter … of real encounter with the poorest and those who suffer the greatest need. It is a covenant culture, a culture of the covenant of love. Not as a catchphrase but as practical action.
“When Pope Francis was elected, I testified to what he had always said at our Caritas meeting. I reminded you of his words, ‘look into the eyes of the people, take their hand’. That is exactly what he is saying today,” said Cecilia Mata in Buenos Aires.
Juan Barbosa from Cordoba related, “A young man in a wheelchair is always sitting at the traffic lights in Cordoba. I not only didn’t look at him, I never even gave him a cent. After I had read a sermon of Pope Francis about giving alms, I began to give him something and above all to make sure that I looked into his eyes. … The smile he gave me was far more valuable than what I had given him, and his spontaneous friendship made the stop at those traffic lights a joy. … Since I also do a lot of walking in order to remain trim, I also often pass these traffic lights on foot. We then greet one another. We have to shout because of the distance and the noise. It costs little, after all, to be a bit better!”
Pope Francis’ video message for the Kajetan Pilgrimage in Liniers, Buenos Aires
Good afternoon.
As every year, after having gone through the queue, I speak with you. This time I went through the queue with my heart. I’m a bit far away and I can’t share with you this very lovely moment — this moment in which you are walking towards the image of Saint Cajetan. Why? To meet with him, to meet with Jesus. However today, the motto of this pilgrimage, a motto chosen by you, selected among many possibilities, the motto speaks today of another meeting, and it says: “With Jesus and Saint Cajetan, We Go to Meet Those in Most Need”
It speaks of the meeting with people in greater need, those who need us to give them a hand, to look at them with affection, to share their pain and anxieties, their problems. However, what’s important is not to look at them from afar, or to help them from afar. No, No! It’s to go and meet with them. That is what a Christian is! That is what Jesus teaches us: to go and meet with those in most need as Jesus did, who always went out to meet people. He went to meet them. We must go out and meet the neediest.
Sometimes I ask a person: “Do you give alms?”
They say: “Yes, Father.”
“And when you give alms, do you look at the eyes of the people to whom you give alms?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking.”
“Then you didn’t meet him. You tossed the alms and left.”
“When you give alms, do you touch the hand of the needy person, or do you toss a coin to him.”
“No, I toss the coin.”
“And you didn’t touch him? If you didn’t touch him, you didn’t meet with him.”
What Jesus teaches us first is to meet with one another and in our meeting, to help. We need to know how to come together. We need to build, to create, to construct a culture of coming together.
So many disagreements, troubles in the family, always! — problems in the neighborhood, problems at work, problems everywhere. And disagreements don’t help. What we need is the culture of coming together, of going out to meet one another. And the motto says, to meet with the neediest, namely, with those who are in greater need than I am. To meet with those who are going through a bad time, worse than the one I’m going through. There is always someone who is having a worse time. Alas! There is always, always someone! Then I think, I’m going through a bad time. I come to the queue to meet with Saint Cajetan and with Jesus, and then I go out to meet with others, because there is always someone who is worse off. It is with these that we must come together.
Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for coming here today. Thank you for all that you bear in your heart. Jesus loves you very much. Saint Cajetan loves you very much. He only asks one thing of you: that you come together! That you go out and seek and find one in greater need! But not alone – with Jesus, with Saint Cajetan!
Am I going to go out to convince someone to become a Catholic? No, no, no! You are going to meet with him, he is your brother! That’s enough! And you are going to help him, the rest Jesus does, the Holy Spirit does it.
Remember well: with Saint Cajetan, we the needy go to meet with those who are in greater need. And, hopefully, Jesus will direct your way so that you will meet with one in greater need. When you meet with the one in greater need, your heart will begin to enlarge, to enlarge, to enlarge! Because our coming together multiplies our capacity to love – our meeting with another enlarges our heart. Do it! “But I don’t know how to do it.” No, no, no! With Jesus and Saint Cajetan you can! May God bless you and may you end well Saint Cajetan’s day.
And please, don’t forget to pray for me. Thank you.
(CdM,RC-RV)
