Pope Francis celebrates Mass of St Michael the Archangel for the Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City. Commenting on Sunday’s Gospel reading, the Pope said our lives are like a vineyard that must be carefully guarded.

By Adriana Masotti

On Saturday afternoon, Pope Francis presided at Holy Mass for the Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City. The Liturgy, which was celebrated in the Grotto of Lourdes in the Vatican Gardens, commemorated the gendarmes’ patron, St Michael the Archangel, whose feast occurs on 29 September.

One who does not fight is not a Christian

In his homily, Pope Francis took up the image of the vineyard from the first reading, from the book of Isaiah. The work of the gendarmes, he said, is like the vineyard that enemies enter in the night in order to ruin and destroy what is planted there in. The vineyard, he continued, is also an image of everyone’s life, where good and evil struggle against each other.

Pope Francis said, “The Lord has planted each of us as if we were branches of a good vineyard, but the enemy always comes to ruin us. This is the struggle of every day: yours and mine and that of all of us. One who does not fight is not a Christian, one who does not suffer temptation is not a Christian.”

Each of us must guard the vineyard

All of us, the Pope continues, are sinners, but we want to move forward and therefore we must fight against the devil who wants to enter our lives. Remembering that the archangel Michael helps in this battle, he said, “We must be careful and guard the vineyard: the vineyard of each one of you, the vineyard of your families, of your children; and the vineyard, here, in the Vatican, so that no bad shoots enter.”

The devil tries to triumph by destroying

The parable of the wicked tenants from the Gospel of Matthew show us that when the devil wants to take possession of something he destroys it. A war that seeks to destroy everything is a dirty war, the Pope remarked, saying that this is precisely the tactic of the devil, who tries to win by destroying everything. But St Michael, the Pope concluded, “helps us to drive him out.”