FULL TEXT: Cardinal Mamberti’s homily for the ninth Novendiales Mass

Cardinal Dominique Mamberti delivers his homily during the ninth Novendiales Mass for Pope Francis on the third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025, at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, May 4, 2025 / 20:28 pm (CNA).

Editor’s Note: On May 4, 2025, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, the former prefect of the prefect of the supreme tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, delivered the following homily during the ninth day of Novendiales Masses for Pope Francis. The text below is a CNA working translation of the Italian original published by the Vatican.

Venerable cardinal fathers, dear brothers in the episcopate and in the priesthood, dear brothers and sisters:

The Liturgy of the Word of this last Novendial in suffrage of Pope Francis is that of the third Sunday of Easter, and the passage from John’s Gospel just proclaimed represents the encounter of the resurrected Jesus with some apostles and disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, which ends with the mission entrusted to Peter by the Lord and Jesus’ command, “Follow me!”

The episode is reminiscent of that of the first miraculous fishing, recounted by Luke, when Jesus had called Simon, James, and John, announcing to Simon that he would become a fisher of men. Since that time, Peter had followed him, sometimes in misunderstanding and even in betrayal, but in today’s encounter, the last before Christ’s return to the Father, Peter receives from him the task of shepherding his flock.

Love is the key word of this Gospel passage. The first to recognize Jesus is “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” John, who exclaims: “It is the Lord!” and Peter immediately throws himself into the sea to join the Master. After they had shared the food, which will have kindled in the hearts of the Apostles the memory of the Last Supper, the dialogue between Jesus and Peter begins, the threefold question of the Lord and Peter’s threefold response.

The first two times, Jesus adopts the verb to love, a strong word, while Peter, mindful of the betrayal, responds with the less demanding expression “to care,” and the third time Jesus stresses the expression to care, adjusting to the Apostle’s weakness. Pope Benedict XVI noted in commenting on this dialogue: “Simon understands that Jesus is satisfied with his poor love, the only one of which he is capable. … It is precisely this divine adjustment that gives hope to the disciple, who has recognized the suffering of infidelity. … From that day on, Peter “followed” the Master with a precise awareness of his own fragility; but this awareness did not discourage him. For he knew that he could count on the presence of the Risen One beside him … and so he shows us the way as well” (General audience, May 24, 2006).

In his homily at the Mass for the 25th anniversary of his pontificate, St. John Paul II confirmed: “Today, dear brothers and sisters, I am pleased to share with you an experience that has been going on now for a quarter of a century. Every day the same dialogue between Jesus and Peter takes place within my heart. In the spirit, I stare at the benevolent gaze of the risen Christ. He, though aware of my human frailty, encourages me to respond with confidence like Peter: ‘Lord,you know everything; you know that I love you’ (Jn 21:17). And then he invites me to assume the responsibilities that he himself has entrusted to me” (Homily, Oct. 16, 2003).

This mission is love itself, which becomes service to the Church and to all humanity. Peter and the Apostles assumed it immediately, by the power of the Spirit they had received at Pentecost, as we heard in the first reading: “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our Fathers raised up Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. God raised him to his right hand, as head and Savior.”

We have all admired how much Pope Francis, animated by the Lord’s love and carried by his grace, has been faithful to his mission to the utmost consumption of his strength. He has reminded the powerful that we must obey God rather than men and proclaimed to all humanity the joy of the Gospel, the merciful Father, Christ the savior. He did this in his magisterium, in his travels, in his gestures, in his lifestyle. I was close to him on Easter Day, at the loggia of blessings in this basilica, witnessing his suffering but above all his courage and determination to serve the people of God to the end.

In the second reading, taken from the Book of Revelation, we heard the praise that the whole universe gives to the One who sits on the throne and to the Lamb: “Praise, honor, glory and power, throughout the ages. And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen.’ And the elders prostrated themselves in worship.”

Adoration is an essential dimension of the Church’s mission and the lives of the faithful. Pope Francis often recalled this, as for example in his homily for the Feast of the Epiphany last year: “The Magi had their hearts prostrated in adoration. … They came to Bethlehem and, when they saw the Child, ‘they prostrated themselves and adored him’ (Mt 2:11). … A king who came to serve us, aGod who became man. Before this mystery, we are called to bow our hearts and knees to worship: to worship the God who comes in littleness, who inhabits the normality of our homes, who dies out of love. … Brothers and sisters, we have lost the habit of worship, we have lost this capacity that gives us adoration. Let us rediscover the taste of the prayer of adoration. … There is a lack of adoration among us today” (Homily, Jan. 6, 2024).

This capacity that gives adoration was not difficult to recognize in Pope Francis. His intense pastoral life, his countless meetings, were grounded in the long moments of prayer that the Ignatian discipline had imprinted in him. Many times he reminded us that contemplation is “a dynamism of love” that “elevates us to God not to detach us from the earth, but to make us inhabit it in profundity” (Audience to the Delegates of the Discalced Carmelites, April 18, 2024). And everything he did, he did under the gaze of Mary. There will remain in our memory and in our hearts his 126 stops before the “Salus Populi Romani.” And now that he rests at the beloved image, we entrust him with gratitude and confidence to the intercession of the mother of the Lord and our mother.