Gospel (Lk 10,13-16) - At that time, Jesus said: «Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida! Because if the miracles that occurred among you had occurred in Tire and Sidon, they would have converted long ago, dressed in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes. Well, in the judgment, Tire and Sidon will be treated less harshly than you. And you, Capernaum, will you perhaps be raised up to heaven? You will fall to hell! Whoever listens to you listens to me, whoever despises you despises me. And whoever despises me despises him who sent me."

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, remembering his death which occurred on the night of 3 October 1226. In him the Gospel became the leaven of universal brotherhood. The evangelical page that the liturgy offers us on this feast reports one of Jesus' prayers. It is Jesus' thanks to the Father because he bent over the little ones, revealing to them the mystery of his saving love, a mystery hidden for centuries and which not even the wise would have been able to understand if God himself had not revealed it: God loved the world so much that he sent his own Son to save men from the power of evil and death. And it pleased the Father to save men, starting from the smallest and weakest. It is the "privilege of the poor", which the biblical story speaks of from the first pages and which is still present today in the life of Jesus' disciples. Pope Francis never ceases to remind us of it with his own example. Precisely for this reason he chose the name of the saint of Assisi, who still urges us today with his example to enroll ourselves among the little ones who welcomed and experienced this love. Saint Francis is part of that long line of believers who, like a red thread, runs through twenty centuries of Christian history: God's preference for the poor and the weak. It is from here that God leaves to save the world. Francis retraced the ancient story of Jesus' disciples: they, simple and despised people, were chosen by Jesus as Apostles of the kingdom. Through today's disciples, Jesus continues to address the tired crowds of this world today and tell them: "Come to me, all you who are tired and burdened, and I will give you rest".