Novendiales 5th Day: April 30, 2025

At 5 p.m. (Rome Time) this afternoon in the Vatican Basilica, the Eucharistic Celebration in suffrage of the Roman Pontiff Francis took place on the fifth day of the Novendiales. The Papal Chapel in particular was invited to the Celebration. The Concelebration was presided over by His Eminence Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Vice Dean of the College of Cardinals. Below is a translation of the given by Most Eminent Cardinal Leonardo Sandri.

Novendiales 5th Day: April 30, 2025

Venerable Brother Cardinals,

Sisters and brothers in the Lord!

1. Christ is Risen! With even more emotion within a celebration of suffrage such as the Novendiali, we sing the Paschal Alleluia, that song that resounded from the deacon’s voice “Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum quod est Alleluia,” even in this Basilica that moments before the Vigil was visited by the Holy Father Francis. In a way we think unconsciously he was preparing to cross another Red Sea, another night that Christ’s Resurrection allows us to call blessed, the night of which it is said “et nox sicut dies illuminabitur.”

In a few days, Cardinal Proto Deacon will use a similar formula, announcing to the Church and the world the gaudium magnum of having a new Pope: it is from the Paschal experience of Christ that the ministry of the Successor of Peter finds meaning, called in every age to live out the words just heard in the Gospel “And you, once converted, confirm your brothers.” Peter confirms the brethren in the faith that the Crucified One is the Risen One, the Living One forever. The celebration of the Novendials for the deceased Pontiff constitutes on the part of different categories and affiliations the performance of a rite of Christian suffrage: ideally, in this way, too, the Successor of Peter summons us to confirm ourselves, precisely because we renew our profession of faith in the resurrection of the flesh, in the forgiveness of sins, even those of a man who has become Pontiff, and in renewing the awareness that the unity of each person’s history is in God’s hands.

2. Today it is the Cardinal Fathers who are called to participate in the Novendiales, almost a central stage in this ecclesial journey, huddling together in prayer as a Collegium and entrusting to the Lord the one whose first collaborators and advisers they have been, or at least have sought to be, in the Roman Curia as well as in dioceses throughout the world. Ideally, however, each of us, venerable brothers, brings the people for whom and with whom we are called to live out our service: from Tonga with the Pacific Islands to the steppes of Mongolia, from ancient Persia with Tehran to the place from where the proclamation of salvation, Jerusalem, sprang, from the places then flourishing with Christianity and now home to a small flock, in some cases marked by martyrdom, such as Morocco and Algeria, just to mention a few coordinates of the geography that the Holy Father has wanted to sketch in recent years by convening frequent consistories. In all these places and continents, as in those connecting spaces that are the offices of the Secretariat of State and the Roman Curia, as successors of the Apostles we are called every day to remember and live with awareness that “to reign is to serve,” like the Master and Lord, who is in our midst as the one who serves.

3. In fact, one of the titles tradition attributes to the Bishop of Rome is that of Servus Servorum Dei, beloved by St. Gregory the Great since he was only a deacon, as a reminder of this constant truth: the liturgy reminds us of this in the outward signs, when in the most solemn celebrations we wear the tunicella under the chasuble, a reminder of our always having to remain deacons, that is, servants. Pope Francis lived it, choosing different places of suffering and solitude to perform the washing of the feet during the Holy Mass in Coena Domini, but also by getting down on his knees and kissing the feet of the leaders of South Sudan, imploring the gift of peace, with that same style for many considered scandalous, but strongly evangelical, with which St. Paul VI on December 4 fifty years ago in the Sistine Chapel got down on his knees kissing the feet of Melitone, Metropolitan of Chalcedon. The tradition of the Church dear brother cardinals divides us into three orders: bishops, presbyters and deacons, but we are all nevertheless called to serve, witnessing to the Gospel usque ad effusionem sanguinis¸as we swore on the day of the creation of cardinals and is signified by the purple we wear, offering ourselves, collegially and as individuals, as the first collaborators of the Successor of the blessed Apostle Peter.

4. The first reading, taken from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, takes us just outside the Upper Room in Jerusalem, where Jews from every nation under heaven are gathered. It is Peter who takes the floor to justify what had taken place: the apostles are not drunk and they do not overspeak; on the contrary, precisely because they are pervaded by that sober ebrietas of the Spirit, as it will be called later in patristic literature, they can be understood even by different peoples, each in his own language. It is significant that in the Novendials this reading was chosen: certainly it is in reference to the apostle Peter, being his first discourse, but the context is that of the Pentecost that has just occurred. The temporal reference Luke indicates is that of “as the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled.” What does this fulfillment mean? It is at once a coming to an end, at the same time a coming to fullness, and because of this initiating a new beginning. The evangelist uses here the same verb he had used in Gospel chapter 9, when after the Transfiguration, coming down from the mountain, “while the days were being fulfilled in which he would be lifted up on high,” Jesus hardened his countenance by heading toward Jerusalem, where the Scriptures concerning him would be fulfilled as he later reminded the lost disciples on the road to Emmaus. After the summit of the Transfiguration, the journey toward the fulfillment of the prophecies in Easter in Jerusalem; after Easter the expectation of the Spirit at Pentecost, with the fullness of the gift of the Spirit the beginning of the Church. We live the transition between the conclusion of the life of the Successor of Peter, Pope Francis and the fulfillment of the promise so that with the new outpouring of the Spirit the Church of Christ can continue its journey among men with a new Shepherd. But what prophecy is fulfilled at Pentecost? The one that the liturgical pericope omitted but which was so dear and so much quoted by Pope Francis, contained in the third chapter of Joel: “On everyone I will pour out my Spirit; your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will have visions and your old men will have dreams…whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Our dear Holy Father loved to repeat it to talk about the meeting and dialogue between the generations, the need for the elders to tell their dreams to the young people, and together for the latter with their energy and vision to be able with God’s help to translate them into reality. “there is no future without this encounter between elders and youth; there is no growth without roots and no blossoming without new shoots. Never prophecy without memory, never memory without prophecy; and always meet.” Somehow Pope Francis also leaves this word for the College of Cardinals, composed of young people and older people, in which all may allow themselves to be taught by God, sense the dream He has for His Church and try to realize it with youth and renewed enthusiasm.

5. In the Bull of Indiation of the Jubilee Pope Francis indicated a vision, a dream for which we must already prepare ourselves and which will be entrusted to the new Pontiff: “this Holy Year will orient the path toward another fundamental anniversary for all Christians: in 2033, in fact, the two thousand years of the Redemption accomplished through the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus will be celebrated. We are thus before a journey marked by great stages, in which God’s grace precedes and accompanies the people who walk zealous in faith, industrious in charity and persevering in hope (cf.1Th 1:3). Spiritually, we will all make ourselves pilgrims on the roads of the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, to proclaim to the world from the Holy Sepulcher-hoping to be able to do so with all the brothers and sisters whom one baptism has consecrated-“The Lord is truly risen and has appeared to Simon!”

6. Lord, we entrust to you your servant, Pope Francis, that you may fill him now with joy in your presence, and we ask for the grace to fulfill his vision for a Church that proclaims the mystery of Christ, Crucified and Risen! Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, intercede with your prayers for him who so willingly fixed your loving gaze, and now rests in the Basilica dedicated to you. So be it.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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