During his brief homily at an April 2 Mass at the chapel of St. Marta’s Residence, Pope Francis encouraged the faithful to pray to God for the gift of tears, to imitate Mary Magdalene during this Easter season. Addressing various members of the Vatican gendarmerie and other Vatican workers present for the Mass, the Holy Father mediated on the passage about the “sinful” woman who wept upon seeing the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene, he said, is the woman “whom Jesus said had loved much and therefore her sins were forgiven.” However, she had to “confront the loss of all her hopes” in not finding Jesus, and for this reason she wept. “All of us have felt joy, sadness and sorrow in our lives,” but “have we wept during the darkest moment? Have we had that gift of tears that prepare the eyes to look, to see the Lord?” the Pope asked. “We too can ask the Lord for the gift of tears,” he said. “It is a beautiful grace…to weep praying for everything: for what is good, for our sins, for graces, for joy itself.” Weeping, the Holy Father explained, “prepares us to see Jesus. It is the Lord," he said, “who gives us the grace, to all, to be able to say with our lives, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ not because he has appeared, but because ‘I have seen him in my heart.’ And this should be the testimony of our lives: ‘I live this way because I have seen the Lord.’”
Born during the turbulent era of the French Revolution, Saint Jeanne Jugan rose above hardship and a lack of formal schooling to become a profound vessel of Christ’s mercy. After losing her father at a young age and working through her youth as a kitchen maid and nurse, her life radically changed one freezing night when she encountered a blind, paralyzed elderly woman with nowhere to go. Jeanne carried the woman back to her own home, placed her in her own bed, and began a lifelong mission of radical hospitality. This act of profound love blossomed into the Little Sisters of the Poor , a thriving community dedicated to sheltering and honoring the destitute elderly. Despite later facing heavy trials—including being unjustly sidelined and stripped of her leadership by a controlling chaplain—Jeanne accepted her obscurity and exile with a joyful spirit, resting her complete trust in God's hidden providence until her death in 1879. In our daily lives, Saint Jeanne Jugan invites us to lo...