On September 7, 2019 Pope Francis traveled to Madagascar, the second destination of his Apostolic Trip. Below is the full text of his prepared speech at the Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites:Dear Mother Madeleine of the Annunciation, Dearest Sisters, Thank you, Mother, for your warm welcome and your kind words, which echo the sentiments of the contemplative nuns of all the different monasteries of this country. I thank every one of you, dear Sisters, for leaving the cloister for a moment in order to show your communion with me and with the life and mission of the entire Church, particularly the Church in Madagascar. I am grateful for your presence, for your fidelity and for the radiant witness to Jesus Christ that you offer to the community. In this country, there may be poverty, but there is also great richness! For here we find a great treasure of natural, human and spiritual beauty. You too, dear Sisters, share in this beauty of Madagascar, its people and its Church, for it is the beauty of Christ that lights up your faces and your lives. Indeed, thanks to you, the Church in Madagascar is all the more beautifulin the Lord’s eyes and in the eyes of the whole world as well. The three Psalms of today’s liturgy express the anguish of the Psalmist in a moment of trialand danger. Allow me to reflect on the first of them, taken from Psalm 119, the lengthiest of the Psalter, since it devotes eight verses to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. No doubt, its author wasa contemplative, someone familiar with prolonged and beautiful experiences of prayer. In today’spassage, the word “consume” appears several times and, significantly, in two senses. The one who prays is “consumed” by the desire to encounter God. You yourselves are a livingtestimony to this insatiable desire present in the heart of all men and women. Amid the many proposals that claim to satisfy the human heart, but prove incapable of doing so, the contemplativelife is the torch that leads to the one eternal fire, “the living flame of love that wounds tenderly” (SaintJohn of the Cross). You are a visible sign of “the goal toward which the entire ecclesial community journeys. For the Church ‘advances down the paths of time with her eyes fixed on the future restoration of all things in Christ’, thus announcing in advance the glory of heaven” (Vultum Dei Quaerere, 2). We are constantly tempted to satisfy our desire for eternity with fleeting things. We find ourselves adrift on surging seas that only end up overwhelming our lives and our spirit. For thisreason, “the world needs you every bit as much as a sailor on the high seas needs a beacon to guide him to a safe haven. Be beacons to those near to you and, above all, to those far away. Be torches to guide men and women along their journey through the dark night of time. Be sentinels of the morning (cf. Is 21:11-12), heralding the dawn (cf. Lk 1:78). By your transfigured life, and with simple words pondered in silence, show us the One who is the way, and the truth and the life (cf. Jn 14:6), the Lord who alone brings us fulfilment and bestows life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). Cry out to us, as Andrewdid to Simon: ‘We have found the Lord’ (cf. Jn 1:40). Like Mary Magdalene on Easter morning,announce to us: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ (Jn 20:18)” (ibid., 6).
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