Pope Francis prayed for teachers and students who are trying to adapt and to do their work online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Let us pray today for teachers who have to work so hard in order to do lessons on the internet and other media,” the pope said today, 24th April, at the beginning of his early morning Mass.
“Let us also pray for students who have to take their exams in a way they are not used to,” he said.
In his homily at the Mass, which was livestreamed from the chapel of his residence, Pope Francis looked at how Jesus was always teaching his apostles to be servants who are never afraid to be close to the people and to give them concrete assistance.
“Jesus loved being in the middle of the crowd” because, in addition to being the best way to serve them, it was “a symbol of the universality of redemption,” the pope said.
But the crowd was “one of the bigger things the apostles did not like,” he said, because they wanted to be “close to the Lord, to hear the Lord, to hear everything the Lord said.”
The apostles’ attitude was understandable, he said, because “they were chosen and they felt a bit (like) a privileged few, a privileged class, an ‘aristocracy,’ let’s say, close to the Lord and the Lord did things to correct them so many times.”
For example, he said, when Jesus got angry with the disciples who were trying to turn the children away from him for fear of them being a nuisance or the time on the road to Jericho when the beggar was told to be silent, but Jesus wanted him to be brought near.
Jesus was always teaching and showing his disciples to be close to the people of God, the pope said.
Picture: Pope Francis delivers the homily as he celebrates Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae at the Vatican on 24th April 2020. The pope began the Mass praying for teachers and students who have had to adapt to working online during the Covid-19 pandemic. (CNS photo/Vatican Media).
