• Speaking before the recitation of the Marian prayer and drawing inspiration from Sunday’s Gospel, the Pope said that “even today, in the face of certain misfortunes and tragic events, we can be tempted to ‘discharge’ the responsibility on the victims, or even God himself. But the Gospel, he said, invites us to reflect on what is our idea of ​​God? “Do we believe that God is that way, or is it our own projection, a god made ‘in our image and likeness’?”
    The Holy Father stressed, that Jesus calls upon us to draw from painful events a warning that concerns everyone, because we are all sinners. He says to those who asked him, ‘if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did”.
    Jesus, Pope Francis explained, calls us to change our heart, and make a radical change in the our journey of life, by abandoning compromises with evil and by being less hypocritical because he noted, nearly everyone has “a little piece of hypocrisy.”
    “Unfortunately”, said Pope Francis, “each of us looks a lot like a tree that has shown to be sterile for many years. Fortunately for us, Jesus is like the peasant who, with limitless patience, gets again an extension for the barren fig tree…”
    Concluding his address he urged people has to take advantage of  “A ‘year’ of grace, this Year of Mercy which is offered to us as an opportunity for repentance and salvation, a time for the Jubilee Year of Mercy. 
    Source: Vatican Radio