|
So BBTB that I got to concelebrate the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV on Sunday May 18! Crazy Good! So Holy Spirit! About four months before we were planning to go to Rome my dear friends and I were talking about when to fly home and they suggested Sunday, but I said no let’s go home on Tuesday! The Holy Spirit teed it up so that we could be there for the historical inaugural mass! Staying at a hotel one block from the Vatican! Imagine a mass where the Vatican Square and beyond is filled with over 250,000 people surrounding our new Pope Leo XIV, over 100 Cardinals – there are only 220 in the world, hundreds of bishops and about 4000 priests. Talk about the visible, structured apostolic church Jesus founded on the apostles, leading us to heaven. Hard to imagine a fuller mass I’ll ever be at on earth than that!
Well, after the mass I started getting texts and emails literally from around the world because they had seen me live on Vatican TV! Among the 100,000’s people the TV camera very much focused in on me! And this is exactly what Jesus does for each one of us! He sees, knows and loves me! I don’t get lost on him! Every moment of my life I have his infinite, undivided attention and the reason he came from heaven to earth was to bring me back to heaven! He came to destroy anything that destroys me! He came to take away and obliterate any separation between me and him. He came to give his life so that I could be one in him as he is in the Father and the Father is in him! Yes, Pope Leo XIV official motto is “In the One, we are one.” This phrase is drawn from a sermon by Saint Augustine on Psalm 128, where he reflects on the unity of Christians in Christ. Christ’s desire is that I would be a saint, i.e. one with him, in heaven forever! And that is for you! And that is for everyone!
PRAY- Father, may your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We want heaven! Pope Benedict XVI said, “It would be a mistake to interpret the Ascension as the temporary absence of Christ from the world.” Rather, “we go to heaven the extent we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him.” Heaven is a person: Jesus himself is what we call heaven.” How do we get heaven? Together. In church. We bring our physical bodies along with our beautiful yet broken souls to physically receive heaven- you Jesus in the body and blood, soul and divinity of your Eucharist. I don’t get lost on you, Jesus. In the crowd of 100,000’s you pan in on me. It is true- every moment of my life I have your infinite, undivided attention. You see me, know me and love me. Your one and only desire for me is Heaven. Let your Kingdom come, let your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen!
You are loved!
+Fr John Amsberry
| 
