In his brief homily at a Roman parish Sunday, Pope Francis reflected on the beautiful faces of Jesus during the Transfiguration and the Resurrection, saying they give us the hope and courage needed to handle the face that comes between the two: the face of the Crucifixion.
“Between this beautiful transfiguration and that Resurrection there will be another face of Jesus. There will be a face that’s not so beautiful,” the pope said March 12.
“There will be an ugly face, disfigured, tortured, despised (and) bloodied. Jesus’ entire body is like something to throw away,” he said, adding that there are “two transfigurations, and in the middle is Jesus Crucified, the Cross.”
He encouraged parishioners to look at the Cross often, and to remember how Jesus was “annihilated” to save us.
Francis said Jesus “was made sin. Sin is the worst thing, sin is an offense against God, a slap in the face to God…And Jesus became sin, he was annihilated.”
And to prepare his disciples “not to be scandalized” by seeing him on the Cross, Jesus was transfigured, he said, explaining that it provides the needed assurance “to go forward.”
“To see this face, so beautiful, so luminous, which is the same that we see in the transfiguration and it’s the same one that we’ll see in heaven,” is needed, he said, but urged them to also think about the face of Jesus on the Cross.
Francis then urged faithful to contemplate these two faces of Jesus: “the transfigured one and the one made sin, cursed.”
Doing this “encourages us to go forward on the path of life, the Christian journey. It also encourages us in the forgiveness of our sins, we’ve sinned a lot,” he said.
But above all it “encourages us in trust,” Pope Francis said. “Because if he became sin because he took ours upon himself, he is always disposed to forgive us. We only have to ask him.”
Pope Francis made his comments while celebrating Mass at the Roman parish of Santa Maddalena di Canossa, which sits on the outskirts of Rome and is run by the Canossian order Sons of Charity and their sister-branch, the Sisters of Charity.
Upon his arrival the pope was greeted by the superior general of the Sons of Charity, Father Giorgio Valente, who has been in charge of the parish since the canonization of their founder in 1988. The Vicar of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, and Bishop Paolo Selvadagi, the auxiliary of Rome’s west sector, also greeted Pope Francis. The last Pope to visit the parish was St. John Paul II in 1996.
Before celebrating Mass the pope met with youth, the Daughters of Charity sisters and their superior general Sr. Annamaria Babbini, a group of elderly and sick persons belonging to the parish, the parents of the 65 children baptized there in 2016 as well as a number of the parish’s pastoral workers.
During his various encounters, the pope took questions from the youth, some of whom were members of the Scouts of Europe group. He also heard the confessions of four people, including a teenager, a youth and two adults, a woman and a man.
The pope was thirty minutes late to Mass due to meetings with various groups from the parish community. He kept his homily short, contrasting the luminous faces of Jesus at the Transfiguration and the Resurrection with the face of Jesus on the Cross.
