'Adam, where are you?' This question is charged with all the
sorrow of a Father who has lost his child.
The Father knew the risk of freedom; he knew that his
children could be lost… yet perhaps not even the Father could imagine so great
a fall, so profound an abyss! Here, before the boundless tragedy of the
Holocaust, that cries – “Where are you?” – echoes like a faint voice in an
unfathomable abyss…
'Adam, who are you? I no longer recognise you.'
Who are you, o man? What have you become? Of what horror
have you been capable? What made you fall to such depths? Certainly it is not
the dust of the earth from which you were made. The dust of the earth is
something good, the work of my hands. Certainly it is not the breath of life
which I breathed into you. That breath comes from me, and it is something good.
“No, this abyss is not merely the work of your own hands,
your own heart… Who corrupted you? Who disfigured you? Who led you to presume
that you are the master of good and evil? Who convinced you that you were god?
Not only did you torture and kill your brothers and sisters, but you sacrificed
them to yourself, because you made yourself a god.
“Today, in this place, we hear once more the voice of God:
“Adam, where are you?”
“From the ground there rises up a soft cry: 'Have mercy on
us, O Lord!' To you, O Lord our God, belongs righteousness; but to us confusion
of face and shame.
“A great evil has befallen us, such as never happened under
the heavens. Now, Lord, hear our prayer, hear our plea, save us in your mercy.
Save us from this horror.
“Almighty Lord, a soul in anguish cries out to you. Hear,
Lord, and have mercy! We have sinned against you. You reign forever. Remember
us in your mercy. Grant us the grace to be ashamed of what we men have done, to
be ashamed of this massive idolatry, of having despised and destroyed our own
flesh which you formed from the earth, to which you gave life with your own
breath of life. Never again, Lord, never again!
“'Adam, where are you?' Here we are, Lord, shamed by what
man, created in your own image and likeness, was capable of doing. Remember us
in your mercy”.
(Pope Francis' reflections at the Jerusalem Memorial for
victims of Holocaust)
The Eternal Flame at Yad Vashem
During his visit, the Pope signed the Yad Vashem Guest Book
in Spanish. English translation of his
message:
"With shame for what man, who was created in the image
of God, was able to do; with shame for the fact that man made himself the owner
of evil; with shame that man made himself into God and sacrificed his brothers.
Never again!! Never again!!
Francis
5.26.2014"
