“When we pray, we need to be humble,” he said. “This is the first attitude when going to pray, just as there is the habit in many places of going to pray in church: women who wear a veil or take holy water to start praying, in this way we must tell ourselves, before praying … that God will give me what it is right to give. He knows.”
“Jesus had great wisdom by putting the ‘Our Father’ on our lips … Better to leave it to Him: ‘Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done,’” he advised.
The pope said that after Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” it might appear that God did not listen.
“The Son must drink fully from the chalice of the Passion,” Francis said. “But Holy Saturday is not the final chapter, because on the third day, Sunday, there is the Resurrection.”
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“Evil is never the lord of the last day. God is the Lord of the last day … the day when all human longings for salvation will be fulfilled,” he explained.
“We learn this humble patience to wait for the grace of the Lord, to wait for the last day. Many times, the penultimate day is very bad, because human suffering is bad. But the Lord is there and on the last day He solves everything,” he said.
The address was the 35th reflection in the pope’s cycle of catechesis on prayer, which he launched in May 2020 and resumed in October following nine addresses on healing the world after the pandemic.
At the end of the audience, the pope met Auschwitz survivor Lidia Maksymowicz, who showed the pope her concentration camp tattoo, which the pope bowed to kiss.
Pope Francis also recalled that May 26 is the feast of St. Philip Neri, who is also called “the saint of joy.”
“May consoling joy, a gift from the Lord, accompany and enrich the journey of each of you,” Pope Francis said.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.