Pope Francis prays for fears of the coronavirus

Pope Francis Thursday prayed for all those who are afraid of the future because of the coronavirus epidemic, asking for help from the Lord to address these concerns.

"In these days of so much suffering, there is so much fear," he said on March 26.

"The fear of the elderly, who are alone, in nursing homes, or in the hospital, or in their home and don't know what can happen," he said. "The fear of unemployed workers who are thinking about how to feed their children and see hunger coming."

There is also, he said, the fear felt by many social workers who are helping to run the company, putting themselves at risk of catching the coronavirus.

"Also, the fear - the fears - of each of us," he observed. “Each of us knows their own. We pray to the Lord to help us trust, to endure and overcome our fears. "

During the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis offers his daily Mass in the chapel of the Santa Marta pension in the Vatican for all those affected by COVID-19.

In the homily of the mass, the pope reflected on the first reading of the day of Exodus, when Moses prepares to go down the mountain where God gave him the 10 commandments, but the Israelites, freed from Egypt, created an idol: they are worshiping a golden calf.

The pope noticed that this calf was made with gold that God told them to ask the Egyptians. "It is a gift of the Lord and with the gift of the Lord they make the idol," said Francis.

"And this is very bad," he said, but this "also happens to us: when we have attitudes that lead us to idolatry, we are attached to things that distance us from God, because we make another god and we do it with gifts that the Lord has done to us. "

"With intelligence, with willpower, with love, with the heart ... are the gifts proper to the Lord that we use for idolatry."

Religious articles, such as an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary or a crucifix, are not idols, he explained, because idols are something in our hearts, hidden.

"The question I would like to ask today is: what is my idol?" he said, observing that there may be idols of worldliness and idols of piety, as a nostalgia for the past that does not trust in God.

Francis said that one way people worship the world is to turn the celebration of a sacrament into a worldly feast.

He gave the example of a wedding, in which “you don't know if it is a sacrament in which the new spouses really give everything, loving each other before God, promising to be faithful before God, receiving the grace of God, or if it is a fashion show ... "

"Everyone has their own [idols]," he said. "What are my idols? Where do I hide them? "

“And may the Lord not find us at the end of life and say of each of us: 'You are perverted. You moved away from what I indicated. You prostrated yourself before an idol. ""