In our spiritual journey we have got to Piazza Navona,
because it's a place that is always crowded,
there are always thousands of tourists.
And this place might remind us about a very important phrase from Pope Francis' Misericordia et misera,
in which he says that it is very easy to be lonely in a crowd.
And that, although surrounded by people who are accusing, judging and criticising us,
we remain in complete silence, plunged in loneliness, sadness and despair.
And that such crowds are sometimes a huge trap for the soul.
That a man can easily get lost in a crowd.
On the one hand yes,
but on the other, look,
the woman caught in adultery was in a similar situation and in her life it all ended up differently.
There came a moment of confession, mentioned in the previous episode.
Jesus asks "No one has condemned you?" and she replies "No, Lord",
she confesses her sins.
But in order for it to take place,
for her to confess her sins,
to get back her inner joy,
happiness, peace, which Francis talks about,
two things were necessary:
the conscience of the sin and the humility that brought her to make her confession.
First of all, there had to be no one around,
it had to be that a woman met Jesus,
face to face.
Then she admits "I am a sinner"
and it's him who provokes in her a beautiful thought: "No one has condemned me".
And suddenly it turns out that loneliness can be holy,
if it is lived in a way that brings me closer to Christ.
I had an experience at Przystanek Jezus, at Woodstock (Polish music festival),
when I went there for the first time,
I met a girl who's life was deeply scarred, turned upside down.
When she was eleven,
her mum committed suicide and wrote in a note that she was doing it because she had bad children.
So, as you can imagine, that girl had a soul so wounded,
such a broken life history,
she went through addiction, work on the streets,
she really was like that woman from the Gospel that we've been talking about.
I spoke to her for two hours,
in the middle of a big field, in the scorching heat,
then I confessed her for another hour,
I had just enough time to give her absolution and,
because of the heat and dehydration, I simply passed out.
Just like a schoolgirl!
And when I woke up,
laying on the ground, on my back,
I saw that girl, who a moment before had receive an absolution,
the grace of being close to Christ,
immediately becoming Christ herself,
because she took off a scarf from her head, put it into water and started to wipe my face.
And I thought to myself...
- Lucky me!
Yes, in the first place,
because the holiness did manifest in her.
n that moment she was like Veronica, in other words, the real image of Christ.
As she had received mercy,
suddenly this poor, unhappy girl, with life full of misery,
could be like Christ.
And at that moment all the crowds at Woodstock, the thousands of people,
the noise of the concerts were not there.
There we were, only the two of us,
with Christ in our midst,
and it was a very deep, intimate experience of how God's mercy operates.
I found myself in a different situation that I would like to recall in this context,
but related a little bit more to the other woman, mentioned by us, the sinner...
The prostitute who pours perfume over Jesus' feet
And wipes them with her hair.
She was incredibly humble
and conscious of her sin.
But such humility, needed for the confession,
I saw it in a parish priest, quite elderly, my fellow brother Dehonian, in Stockport , near Manchester.
An old school English gentleman,
who lived amongst a 600 strong group of English Catholics in Stockport
nd I was preaching the Word of God there during Paschal Triduum and on Holy Thursday,
during the Mass of the Lord's Supper, we got to the moment of washing of the feet.
And suddenly a man approaches the priest,
helps him to take off the chasuble,
hands him a bowl and a towel
and the priest walks through the church and I am looking for those twelve men, with their washed and perfumed feet,
that the priest would sprinkle with water and wipe with the towel,
as by the ritual, enough to comply with tradition.
I couldn't see them though, and that elderly priest, probably in his eighties,
falls on his knees in front of the first parishioner,
removes his shoes, his socks and starts washing his feet.
Then still on his knees moves to another person.
And I thought to myself "God, let no one have the idea to bring me a bowl and a towel as I won't be able to do it!"
And surely, before I'd even thought it through,
a big Englishman was standing in front of me with a bowl and a towel
and said "Give me your chasuble and go to wash feet!"
And I answered "But I won't be able to manage".
"Why is that?" "I've just arrived!",
"So what?" "But I don't know you!"
"Yes, but today you are Christ, you must go and wash feet".
And he took the chasuble off me, gave me the bowl
and I walked through the church diagonally thinking that maybe the parish priest would finish and come back
but he did not.
On his knees,
that little old man was moving from one person to another and washing their feet.
The most difficult thing for me was to do it to the first person but
ever since I've been thinking of how much of this kind of resistance,
that I found in me on that occasion, is there inside us,
how much vanity, arrogance that make us unable to make that confession, to bend our knees.
And the key to that confession are the consciousness of sin and the humility.
Without those we won't be able to experience the embrace by God's mercy.
Pope Francis writes really beautifully that the same noisy crowd was there on Golgotha,
when Christ was dying in complete silence,
when He got to that moment of an intimate encounter with the Father.
And that the most characteristic thing about Jesus has been that at his death Jesus exclaimed "Forgive them!"
"Them who??"
"Well, us, you and me".
It was at us that He was looking from the cross,
when he was saying to the Father "Forgive them!"
It was then that Mercy got fulfilled.
You know,
I found myself in a similar situation to yours.
One day I took a small group of Polish people to Mother Teresa's cell, here in Rome,
to a tiny room she usually stayed in,
and one of the sisters asked me for confession.
Just like today, I was wearing sandals
and in that little room, that sister was confessing,
bent over, and she was crying a lot.
And her tears were falling from her face on my feet.
I felt those tears, drop by drop, bathing my feet.
And then I understood what it meant to be Christ,
sacramentally, who grants His mercy
and what impact must have had on Christ that woman,
who came to Him in the middle of the dinner
and said "I want to wash your feet with my tears".
Beautiful!
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