VATICAN CITY — Arlington Bishop Michael F. Burbidge
and Father Robert J. Wagner, secretary to the bishop, concelebrated Mass with Pope Francis in the chapel of the pope’s residence at the Domus Sanctae
Marthae Sept. 25.
Bishop Burbidge and Father Wagner are in Rome this week visiting
diocesan seminarians who attend the Pontifical North American College. They
will concelebrate the diaconate ordination Mass for seminarian Nicholas Schierer
Sept. 28 at St. Peter’s Basilica.
In his early morning homily Sept. 25, Pope Francis said that Christians must learn to expect and recognize
God’s consolation and hold dear the peace and tranquility it leaves behind.
The Lord’s consolation
touches one’s inner being “and moves you and gives you a boost of love,
faith and hope, and it also makes you cry for (your) own sins,” the pope
said.
True consolation from God
isn’t “amusement,” which is why it is important to be able to
recognize true solace, “because there are false prophets who seem to
console us and instead deceive us,” he said during an early morning Mass.
One can still look at
turmoil and Christ’s passion and cry with Him, and yet be able to feel and
recognize God’s presence, which “elevates your soul to the things of
heaven, of God and it quiets the soul in the Lord’s peace,” he said.
The pope asked people to
remember to thank God in prayer for always being there to help them “move
forward, to hope, to carry the cross.”
The Lord “will let
us feel his presence” all the time, in moments of weakness or strength, as
long as people know how to wait with humility and always be open and striving
for God and not be a “closed” Christian who has put their life in
“storage” and doesn’t know what to do.
