The key and the scepter are symbols of the power that frees from slavery and death. In your Church, Jesus, your Cross is the greatest sign of your power, it is the love delivered to the extreme for humanity.

You entrust to Peter and his successors the keys of your mercy: “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).

Today the Church should be like a field hospital where wounded people could arrive seeking the goodness and closeness of God. How much poverty and loneliness! How many suffering, tired and exhausted people ask the Church to be a sign of the closeness, goodness, solidarity and mercy of the Lord! They await us to share with them the encounter with Jesus and the experience of mercy.

Only your mercy, Lord, has the power to open hearts to your presence and free us from our darkness and slavery; give us a church “going out”, a missionary church, “with open doors, capable of embracing all humanity, with which it shares “joys and hopes, sadness and anguish” (GS 1).

Come, Lord, Jesus! All our hope is deposited only in your mercy, which is immensely great. Give what you command and send what you want. (cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions 10, 29, 40).